The Daily Mirror’s admission that its photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners were fakes only highlights the importance of images in this war. It was the Mirror’s demand for visual evidence to support its informants’ claims of abuse by British soldiers – claims which are likely to prove correct – that led to the faking of the photographs. We should have seen it coming because in no other war have iconic images played such a major role in the outcome or changed public perception so radically.
The Pentagon made it clear from the beginning of the war against Iraq that there would be no censorship. What it failed to say was that war correspondents might well find themselves in a situation similar to that in Korea in 1950. This was described by one American correspondent as the military saying: “You can write what you like – but if we don’t like it we’ll shoot you.” The figures in Iraq tell a terrible story. Fifteen media people dead, with two missing, presumed dead. If you consider how short the campaign was, Iraq will be notorious as the most dangerous war for journalists ever. This is bad enough. But – and here we tread on delicate ground – it is a fact that the largest single group of them appear to have been killed by the American military.
