U.S. Censoring Katrina Coverage, Groups Say

U.S. Censoring Katrina Coverage, Groups Say: "By Deborah Zabarenko | Reuters | Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page C08

When U.S. officials asked the news media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free- speech watchdogs said yesterday.

The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration's ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors charged in separate telephone interviews.
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"The notion that, when there's very little information from FEMA, that they would even spend the time to be concerned about whether the reporting effort is up to its standards of taste is simply mind-boggling," Daugherty said. "You cannot report on the disaster and give the public a realistic idea of how horrible it is if you don't see that there are bodies as well."
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Rosenstiel also noted that generally, the American media, especially television outlets, are reluctant to show corpses.

"By and large, American television is the most sanitized television in the world," he said. "They are less likely to show bodies, they are less likely to show graphic images of the dead than any television in the world."