"I want you to read my account and make up your own minds," the freelance cameraman writes in an open letter posted Nov. 21 on his Internet Web site, kevinsites.net. It is addressed to the Devil Dogs of 3.1, the Marines with whom he traveled with during the battle for the Iraqi city.
My first reaction to seeing the film on CNN International, where it played like an endless pornographic film loop for two days, was that Sites had given Iraq's terrorists a propaganda windfall that would divert attention from the barbaric execution of Margaret Hassan and other hostages. The photographer's words on his blog suggest that other reactions were even stronger.
"I've been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of antiwar activist," Sites notes, denying that he plays politics in his coverage. He prides himself for avoiding being a tool of anybody's propaganda, "I now find myself a lightning rod of controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling."
Sites has learned a lesson that journalists, politicians and others in the public arena have to live by: Once you have uttered or broadcast them, your words and pictures no longer belong to you. They will be inter- preted or misinterpreted according to the beliefs of your audience and its needs. Intentions do not survive transmission.
The incident in Fallujah -- coming after the graphic images of appalling prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib prison -- offers valuable insights into the powerful weapon known as the shame factor in Arab politics and life.
Shaming an opponent, rival or anyone else who can be useful in a negotiation or conflict is a highly developed instinct in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera's coverage of Iraq or Israel can be explained not only by bias, genuine resentment and payoffs from interested parties, but also by a search for tactical advantage in the psychological and political realms.
Propaganda is too important to be left to the Arab equivalents of the State Department or Pentagon. It is a way of life in the Middle East -- especially in this digital age, when mass imagination and conscience are so profoundly influenced by the visual and the emotional.
Try to imagine the importance that television networks would have attached to the mosque incident in Fallujah, or even to the Abu Ghraib scandal, had there been no film or photographs. But there were. And from here on, any nation and people unfortunate enough to have to take on the kind of mission the Bush administration has drawn in the Middle East will have to assume that there always will be, for better and for worse.
Sites recounts the ambiguous circumstances of the killing he filmed and expresses sympathy for any 18-year-old infantryman who has to make life-or-death decisions in those circumstances. But the photographer leaves no doubt that he believes that the killing was unjustified -- and that it is to the credit of Marine commanders that it is being seriously investigated.
On assignment for NBC, Sites says he "considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away." The film was held for 48 hours for verification. NBC should have taken one more step by making Sites's full account of the incident available to its viewers.
To the Marines, Sites addresses this coda: "When the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility."
His resentment is reserved for those such as al-Jazeera who exploited his work for propaganda purposes while refusing to carry film of terrorist atrocities, except to incite public opinion against the U.S.-led occupation coalition.
Sites's case rests on the assumption that a fully informed public in a democracy will put a tragic incident such as this into perspective and not lose sight of the bigger picture. It is a picture of American troops risking their lives to deliver Iraq from terrorist rule. The scandal of Abu Ghraib, and a shooting in a mosque, do not negate that.
By Jim Hoagland Sunday, November 28, 2004; Page B07
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