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Bill Maher said last Friday (on his show on HBO) to Anderson Cooper that one silver lining of Katrina is that reporters have taken ownership of the news again, and they are exercising first amendment priviledges that have been surrendered one by one to the government. I think the pictures of dead people take the abstraction of death out of the reporting and put it in people's faces, and as a result state and local and federal governments squirm as they are forced to examine and explain their reactions (or lack thereof) to a needs of their constituencies.
However, there are legitimate reasons to restrict access to areas in which workers are retrieving many, many bodies from a natural disaster. There is no need for a reporter to be taking pictures in a neighborhood where many bodies are being dragged from homes. The picture in the NYT (of the body floating in the water next to survivors who are downtown trying to evacuate) is a legitimate expression of the situation. Gratuitous, gruesome pictures of bloated bodies in private areas, such as underwater residential neighborhoods, serves no public good.
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less I say, smarter I am
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