“Spike the Football”: Truth-Telling, the Press and the Bin Laden Photos

Abstract

This article looks at press interpretations of the role of images—specifically, images of national enemies in death—in constructing various duties of media truth-telling. Discourse about the need, or duty, to publish photos of the Nazi leaders hanged at Nuremberg in 1946 provides a context for examining discourse surrounding a similar decision that the White House faced after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. What was seen largely as a third-person effect seven decades ago is more often seen now as a first-person effect: We no longer need to persuade or daunt the slain enemy's die-hard followers, but we have created a set of obligations to persuade or please ourselves.