November 17, 2004 - 12:03 a.m.
There are days when I grow weary of working in a profession where it’s rare to be completely sure that you’ve done the right thing. No matter how benign your actions, no matter how good your intent, it’s likely that readers will find fault somewhere. Give them each a suitcase full of $1 million cash, and they’ll complain that the bills aren’t all facing the same way. The readers who appreciate the work you do hardly ever think to tell you that, and the ones who think your newspaper is errant can’t wait to blast you. It is, in no uncertain terms, the most exhausting part of being an editor.
So there must be a lot of fatigue circulating around the editors’ pods at the Akron Beacon Journal, where a photo from Iraq has caused quite a stir. The culprit in the photo isn’t a dead body, or a gory wound, or a blood-stained wall in some dusty desert town halfway between Baghdad and Fallujah. It’s a young Marine lance corporal and his lit cigarette.
The Romenesko column on www.poynter.org this week linked to a column from the Beacon Journal’s public editor, who wrote about reader feedback to the issue. While the column does show not all readers were opposed to the photograph, many had concerns that a photo of a lit cigarette in a soldier’s mouth would convey to teenagers and children that smoking is attractive, heroic and cool. “I have one simple objection, and it's not about the Marine,” wrote a reader quoted in the column. “You could have picked another photo that didn't show smoking as looking so good.” That’s absurd.
If you’ve seen the photo — taken by a Los Angeles Times photographer and distributed to newspapers through the Associated Press — you would know there’s nothing attractive about it. The Marine’s war paint is smudged, his face is caked with dirt, he’s got a defeated expression on his face, and there’s a bloody scar running down the bridge of his nose. This man, plainly, has been to hell and back. The photograph itself was shot after 12 hours of fighting, which is something I’m guessing this 20-year-old from Kentucky hasn’t been through that often.
News organizations were correct in running that photo because it shows the reality of war. The reality of war is that it makes you tired. The reality of war is that your face gets messed up. The reality of war is that when you’re being shot at for 12 hours straight by insurgents who not only are trying to stop your advance, but are really keen on seeing you dead, the last thing you’re probably going to think about is the health consequences of smoking a cigarette.
War is stressful (not that I know firsthand, mind you) and smoking calms people. It also gives people cancer, but my guess is that it’s not that big a deal when you’re under a hail of gunfire.
To assume that teenagers and children who look at that photo will immediately light up a Marlboro is to assume that teenagers and children, as a group, are profoundly stupid.
The Los Angeles Times and every other newspaper across the country that ran the photo (including The State News, in the interest of full disclosure) was painting a picture depicting the gritty horror of war by using a canvas that just happened to consist of the bloodied, smoky face of a 20-year-old kid from Kentucky. This kid is neither Joe Camel nor the Marlboro man. Maybe some of the people who are so uptight about this photo should relax a little. They can start by having a cigarette.
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