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

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.