After such, a long intro. Hopefully you have enjoyed the, the movies. I actually want to focus on the principle point of today's topic. It is one photograph in the main I'm going to discuss at some length now. First thing that I, I, I think is important. I've talked about Garrison's note to President Clinton and then you will have had a look at the website. The two Aidid lieutenants were extracted. So at least in part, the main military objective was achieved. I also referred to earlier the fact that hundreds if not thousands of Somalians died. In contrast, we're looking at about 100 men who either lost their lives or were wounded. Now, I'm not in any way downplaying that. that is a tragedy and respect needs to be given to those people who put their lives on the line in service of their country. for some people, that's not a fashionable thing to say, but I think it's worth restating periodically. The media coverage was on the loss of American life and also the nature of the loss of American life and some of it was portrayed in an enormously graphic way. Not in the film, but actually on the media that was being screened into the homes of various people at the time. Media images and reports from Mogadishu showed at least one corpse of a US soldier. in fact, the video footage that I mentioned in the Black Hawk Down or the true story of the Black Hawk Down. The History Channel Documentary appears to show a number of fallen soldiers being paraded as trophies. It wasn't enough to a certain degree for the military might to be blown out of the air. Those inside the helicopters had to be humiliated in their death as much as anything else. Okay. If you talk to or follow through on some of the Somalian opinion. The Americans were invited, this is not their land, why are they there. So there's a high degree of hostility in the way that the parent population so to speak to this particular event dealt with it. Many supported the Americans. Many saw them as helping to provide a degree of stability. But for those who were loyal to Aidid, they did not want them in their country. Now I just want to reflect back on one person who was actually Mike Durant's helicopter Super 64 that was taken down during the Battle of Mogadishu. Now, I'm going to bounce backwards and forwards. The Staff Sergeant, Staff Sergeant Bill Cleveland was a member aboard Mike Durant's helicopter. and if I remember rightly, he was effectively the load master. He was in charge of the helicopter behind the behind the pilot, so to speak. Now posthumously, he was award many of the highest honors available to American soldiers. And it's a list down, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, all the way down to the Purple Heart. in commemoration of both himself and Sergeant Thomas Field there is a US Army Aviation Logistics School named after them, the Cleveland Field Training Facility. It might not be the most auspicious memorial but it's, it's remembering their own. The army taking the sacrifices of these men, and at least embodying them for future generations in the army, to think about what their sacrifice was in that regard. Now, the reason I emphasize this Is that you will find online, and I'll put the URL, something that's put together I believe by Bill Cleveland's family. One of the reasons I think this is worth looking at is its reflection of a very personal testament from those very close to Bill Cleveland. he did die as a result of Super 64 crashing. It is suggested that he survived the crash but then was subsequently killed. I made the point in the context of the Pakistani soldiers who died earlier, in, in 1993, that they were mutilated It would appear that similar things happened to those who died in that particular crash. In fact, Mike Durrant both in the film and in interviews afterwards, Felt, he was going to die, the pilot of Super 64 and it took someone who realized what the propaganda value would be of having a live American serviceman to stop him being killed in a similar manner. It's worth going through this site for a number of personal comments about the images which were seen at the time of the battle. And one of the things you might want to consider is the fact that US media streamed images of fallen soldiers, some of them in quite distressing states before it was known who had died, who these bodies were and to a certain degree, before there was any opportunity for the US authorities to inform the families of the death of their loved ones. Now, of the images that came out and were published at the time I want to want us to consider in, in greater depth one. It is quite a disturbing image. but this is an altered image, so just keep that in mind. Paul Watson, who I think was working for the Toronto Star at the time was a photojournalist out in Mogadishu and in the aftermath of the battle on the 4th of October or soon thereafter. He was in a position to photograph what was happening on the ground. So, let's take a look at the photograph, or at least, a photograph from that particular time. Now, I've titled this, quite deliberately, the picture that Time magazine could print. Okay, and this is a version of Paul Watson's first image, I will show you that a little bit later on. this is what Time published. Materially, it is very, very similar to the unaltered image. I will reveal what has been changed later but just consider what this is. Firstly in terms of reportage, this is the photographer interacting very much with the crowd. it might seem like a very bizarre analogy, but my understanding of photojournalism or at least the main thrust of photojournalism is to observe and to report. Now, certainly, that's taking place in this picture. But you can see from the positioning of the individuals. They are staring down the, the barrel of the camera. It's not posed, per se. But there is the interaction between the cameraman and the subject, so I liken this to a little bit in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. To actually observe what's happening in subatomic particles, you actually have to interact with them. Therefore, you cannot determine either their mass or their speed simultaneously. In this instance Paul Watson is actually dealing with the crowd. And this is showing a group of individuals who are displaying a trophy. That's not a criticism of the photographer. It's actually dealing with the situation, as is how do you get a photograph back. Now, the facts you might consider that the central feature here is a fallen American serviceman. Those who went into Somalia went in either under UN supervision so to speak, in the name of the UN or were there to try and make sure that the peace could be kept. I'm not sure what your views would be as the viewer as watchers of this course, but I think there is an element to which the dignity of the dead might be something to consider. again, we dealt with that very briefly, about earlier, about the reaction to Mrs. Thatcher's death in the, in the recent past as well. Here is someone who has been stripped of their uniform. their right leg is bent into an unnatural position, they are strung up. this might be a piece of meat. It's someone who has been dragged through the streets with the baying crowd. None of this talks to me about the dignity of the soldier. Either in the context of having died in service of his country or the way that he's being treated by the opposition, so to speak. I think this is a very traumatic image. I will stand corrected, but I believe that Paul Watson won a Pulitzer Prize for this, this image. It's not the one that he thought was usable, because to a certain degree of the prostrate position of the central character. So, he took a second image and I don't think this is any less traumatic. Again, it's close-cropped. He doesn't have so much of the body there. But, if you could pick out at the bottom, what we have is someone's foot on the soldier's face. There are a number of ways that you can interpret this, the ultimate triumph, you can crush your opponent. So I would take this as being equally disturbing. And again, I'm not in any way criticizing the photographer, but it's dealing with the situation as he found it. and he made the point that those who he was working with at the time did not want him to take another photograph. so there's an element of his own personal risk for taking a second image in this way. the crowd was extremely hostile, he was a Westerner, it didn't matter so much where he actually came from, he was from outside. This was a horrible image, but the fact that he considered it more suitable is only from a matter of degree. So both of these are displayed or both of these are images of what was happening, but neither of them show a great deal of respect by the Somalians for their opponents. In this case members of the US Army. To a certain degree, the photographer himself was surprised about the use of the image. It's one of the reasons that he took the quote, second shot, that he had a photograph with which to convey most of the drama and the relationship between the Somalians and the member of the American armed forces. But again, it, it looks a horrible image, but to the Somalians, this was an invader. This was an alien, this was someone they did not want in their country. Those who are loyal to Mohamed Farrah Aidid. So it's not condoning any reaction but it puts it into that context. Here are two photographs compared next to each other, I'm not more or less offended. By seeing someone's genitalia, I am offended that this decision was made to cover up the part of the man's testicles and the penis that was showing. Because if this reportage, this is reportage. Again, not a criticism of the photographer, but those who subsequently use it. And Paul Watson on the change, he said, it was very telling that the decision was made to censor something considered sexually offensive. Okay? While the outrageous violence of desecrating a corpse is deemed safe for general public consumption. So the photographer himself was surprised and I think this is worth reflecting upon. I use the quote a little bit earlier what exactly was the purpose of this and Steven Mays who's a photo editor said, Time's manipulated, Time's manipulated picture exposes the sensitivities of a nation that is militarily, militarily strong enough to confront one dead soldier, but morally too weak to risk the exposure of a single genital even in such a non-sexual context. Now, I'm not sure that American society was necessarily quotes strong enough to deal with that image per se, in military terms. But having shown the violence, think of Paul Watson's comment. Why is something that is not erotic or titillating subtly deemed to be unacceptable in the context of that photograph. the quote the quote below from Michele Stevenson who's actually Time's director of photography, it was felt we should run the whole picture untouched, for the dignity of the man and his family. You will forgive me, but I have a problem with that statement. At what point in time is the publication of that photograph, in the context of what went on, showing respect for the dignity of the fallen soldier and his family? The original image would have offended more than the slightly altered one. I would question that decision. And not least of which, because I think it questions the integrity of the newspaper. It's a small point in the context of a horrific battle. It's insignificant compared to the loss of life, but I think in terms of historians when you consider what Time chose to do, we made a comment about some of Time's choices of front covers in past lectures. I think there's a responsibility to, if not show the truth, then at least not manipulate it in a way that is deliberately deceiving. Either you print the photograph or you don't. Think about that and think about how different Time's actions are, in this instance, compared to those of Stalin. I know it's not an obvious comparison to make, but it gives you one way to reflect, again, on our denouncement of Stalin. Do we just denounce contemporary media in the same way? Quite a few people do.
