'Don't show dead bodies'

2005-09-09 09:56

A flooded street in New Orleans. (AP)

Washington - Official United States admonitions against broadcasting images of cadavers in New Orleans floodwaters have prompted charges that America's media helped cover up the slow United States response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has taken much of the heat for the lack of organisation, asked news organisations not to show pictures of dead bodies.

US newspapers have published photographs of bodies floating in the city, devastated by flooding after Katrina socked the US Gulf Coast. Press agencies, including Agence France-Presse, have also distributed photographs in which bodies were unidentifiable, but which rankled the public, anyway.

However, US television networks have largely abstained from broadcasting such pictures, as they did on September 11 2001, turning cameras away from those jumping from the twin towers, to avoid putting off viewers.

Being respectful

"The American press is known to be one of the most delicate electronic press in the world," said Larry Siems, Freedom to Write programme director, PEN American Centre, in New York.

"The press exercise a great deal of caution and even self-censorship. It is clearly illegal under US law, the First Amendment" to the US Constitution, he said.

"Out of respect for the families that are missing their loved ones, FEMA has asked that the images not be shown, but this decision is left to the members of the media," said Mark Pfeifle, FEMA spokesperson.

"FEMA personnel on the ground are just trying to be respectful of the families," he said.

Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism at Columbia University, said FEMA's motivation behind the request was what mattered most.

"If it was for the purpose of crisis management, that's completely wrong. If it is to protect the families, I can understand the request, it does not mean the media are going to follow it," she said.

Siems said FEMA was part of President George W Bush's administration, which "has tried in the past to restrict images of the coffins of returning servicemen from Iraq."

"For FEMA to do it seems off-mission, but it comes from an administration that has tried to exert some control over images of important news events," he said.

Mary McGinnis, CBS vice-president in charge of news, said, "We take into consideration what time it would air, and on what broadcast. We are totally respectful of the dead and how we portray them."

- AFP