‘Free Iraq’, Firdos Square, Baghdad. © Photograph by Goran Tomasevic, Reuters/ Landov, Newsweek , 9 April 2003. Reproduced with permission of Reuters. 

Context in source publication

Context 1

... would result in similar patterns of imagery. And, indeed, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 closely followed patterns of visualization that characterized the First Gulf War (Griffin, 2004; Fahmy and Kim, 2008). This was partly the result of similar restrictive military policies, such as the banning of picture taking at Dover Air Force Base, the distribution point for caskets of dead American soldiers returning to the United States, but even more the result of established photographic genres inherited from the First Gulf War. As with the First Gulf War, the press anticipated an inevitable attack by US forces by visually illustrating a build-up of military hardware and power. Again, photographs cata- loguing the American arsenal and the mobilization of American troops prior to combat dominated pictorial coverage. Troops were mostly pictured ‘backstage’, encamped in the desert (in Saudi Arabia?) waiting for word to move out. Fleets of jet fighter-bombers were shown waiting in ranks on the decks of aircraft carriers at sea. Armored convoys were pictured massing along the Iraqi border. Soldiers tested their biochemical suits and masks. Photographs of George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein faced off against each across magazine and newspaper pages (Griffin, 2004, 2008). Then, after weeks of build-up, the arsenal was unleashed. At first, images of actual combat remained limited to pictures of fighter planes taking off, missiles firing from the decks of ships, and puffs of smoke rising over the city of Baghdad. But when convoys of vehicles and troops poured across the border into Iraq, there were between 570 and 750 reporters and photographers embedded with US and British military units. This was a significant policy change. The 2003 Pentagon decision to allow journalists to live, travel and work alongside soldiers in assigned military units was in stark contrast to the restricted mobility and pool- and-review procedures of the 1991 Gulf War, and was even a sharp change from 2001 policies in Afghanistan when reporters were often confined to briefing rooms. In this invasion, many more reporters and photographers were close to the frontline troops, and therefore closer to combat zones. And, indeed, the presence of embedded photojournalists resulted in more pictures of troops in action and more pictures of Iraqis caught in the ‘chaos of war’, than had been seen during the First Gulf War (Griffin, 2004; Fahmy and Kim, 2008). Still, overall patterns of photo coverage did not change. The same genre categories that predomi- nated in 1991 were the most dominant in 2003: backstage images of weaponry and troops, portraits of US political and military leaders, and portraits of enemy or ‘terrorist’ leaders together made up more than 50 percent of all pictures published in American news magazines (Griffin, 2004). And the same categories of imagery were absent from US publications: images of human casualties, whether Iraqi, British, or American; images of destruction to homes or other infrastructure; pictures taken from the perspective of Iraqis. Easy to overlook, but important to note, was the uniformity of visual representation across US news publications and television networks. The system of embedding journalists with the military, like the press pool-and-review system that had been employed in the First Gulf War, worked to create a convergence of reporting and visualization. For example, the same three leading photographic genres (the arsenal, troops, political leaders) comprised half or more of all visual illustrations in each of the three US news magazines (49% in Time , 53% in Newsweek , 58% in US News & World Report , Griffin 2004). The same dominant narratives also characterized the reporting of all major news organizations, not surprising given that reporters were similarly placed alongside troops of the invading convoys. Early on, the potential for sandstorms to impede the invasion’s progress became a common theme. As convoys were underway along major Iraqi highways, the ‘push to Baghdad’ quickly became an overriding narrative for reporting. Progressing towards, and then ‘closing in’, on Baghdad was a recurring motif for both written reports and photography during the first month of the war, right up until the fall of Saddam’s Government and the story’s dénouement: the pulling down of the Saddam statue in Firdos Square – shortly after which President Bush announced the end of major combat operations. Television footage and published photographs prompted and supported this narrative with remarkable cohesion. One image after another of armored convoys moving along Iraqi highways were shown, with accompanying headlines and superimposed call-outs such as ‘Moving Out’, ‘Halfway to Baghdad’, ‘Almost There’, and ‘Closing In’ (see Figure 4). These images steadily and predictably led up to the crowning icon of the invasion, the fall- ing Saddam statue, usually printed with superimposed captions that read, ‘Toppled’ or ‘Free’ (see Figure 5) (Griffin, 2008). The presence of photojournalists traveling with the invading troops did produce one genre of images that was almost completely absent from the First Gulf War coverage: pictures of Iraqi civilians. These included photographs of displaced Iraqi civilians fleeing or traveling along the roadways (sometimes waving at troops), photos of captured Iraqi soldiers or militiamen, photos of Iraqi children and adults receiving humanitarian aid from American and British soldiers and medics, and photos of groups of Iraqis cheering the arrival of US troops. There seems to have been a special effort made to make and publish images of US and British soldiers providing aid to civilians, as these images alone outnum- bered all pictures of civilians (of any nationality) published during the First Gulf War. The time period examined in studies of both the First Gulf War and the Iraq invasion were very similar (approximately two months from the outset of open hostilities in each case) but the invasion of US and Allied troops deep into Iraq in 2003, accompanied by reporters and photographers, logically led to more published pictures of Iraqi civilians. And under these conditions one would also have expected a significant increase in the number of combat images, and in the number of civilian casualties or deaths. Yet, photographs of combat were still largely absent from US visual coverage and images of civilian casualties and death remained rare (Griffin, 2004; Fahmy and Kim, 2008). Fahmy and Kim (2008) found a slightly higher percentage of images in The New York Times and The Guardian depicting what they termed ‘human toll and destruction’ than was found in the US news magazines, but the bulk of these images were of material damage and destruction and not human losses or suffering. In the Iraq War, as in the First Gulf War, there were also pictures that proved false or misleading. Videotape of the purportedly daring rescue of wounded war hero Private Jessica Lynch from her Iraqi captors proved to be staged and spun by the US military at a time when the invasion seemed to need a public relations boost back home. In fact, Private Lynch was taken from a civilian hospital where she was not being held by force, and had not been shot by Iraqi troops as claimed, but was being humanely treated after an accident in her vehicle. According to multiple sources, doctors from the hospital had already informed US officials of Lynch’s presence there and had tried unsuccessfully to return her to American forces. Nonetheless, Lynch’s ‘rescue’ made her an icon of the war. Her picture appeared on the covers of Time , Newsweek and US News & World Report , on the front pages of scores of newspapers, and was splashed across dozens of television news and infotainment programs. She was decorated for bravery upon her return to the United States, and was the subject of an NBC made-for-television movie, which fiction- alized the story of her combat and rescue by further embellishing the already fabricated story originally released by the Pentagon. 20 Controversy has also swirled around perhaps the most famous icon of the war, the photo of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. This picture was initially presented as a candid photograph of jubilant Iraqi citizens spontaneously pulling down the huge symbol of the Iraqi dictator. However, it was later learned that the scene was closely managed by a US Colonel and PSYOP (Psychological Operations) team who cordoned off the square, allowed a relatively small group of Iraqi émigrés to gather around the statue, and then used armored vehicles and steel cables to pull the statue down for the cheering Iraqi group (Fahmy, 2007; Griffin, 2008). Overall, US war coverage in Iraq stands in stark contrast to modernist expectations of photographic witnessing and recording, providing instead a prime example of government managed and institutionally constrained reporting and featuring a limited and sanitized range of visual depiction. The Pentagon policy of embedding journalists with military units proved to be an effective refinement in the management of news coverage, successfully aligning the perspectives of reporters and photographers with the invading forces. Commercial media industries readily conformed to these new arrangements in order to gain easy access to official information, enjoy military transportation and pro- tection, and ensure their capacity to bring viewers daily updates of a highly saleable, America-centric story of US military power and triumph. However, as the story of taking Baghdad and toppling Saddam concluded, and the dramatic invasion turned into a long drawn-out occupation, US media organizations began pulling reporters and photographers out of Iraq. Reminiscent of the media withdrawal from Vietnam after 1969, US journalists were pulled back from Iraq as soon as the conflict became more ambiguous. During 2003, the number of journalists embedded ...