The front page of the Anchorage Daily News made me stop for a minute and reflect on the war. This is an excellent and powerful use of images, putting young men’s faces on a story that I have started to tune out. A front page like this is something I couldn’t ignore, and forced me to think about soldiers losing their lives oversees. These photos stacked and edited like the pages of a high school yearbook, next with the headline “Remember the Fallen” are overwhelming.
Another great example of powerful war images occurred in Seattle in 2004. The Seattle Times ran a photograph of US soldiers’ coffins. This is against Pentagon regulations for the press, but the Times chose to run it.
I think the media has a tendency to show the positive side of war over the negative, and I think it’s important to see images like these.
3 comments:
I think this use of images not only grabs attention, but also forces us to realize the impact. Those faces are recognizable, maybe not to us, but on a larger scale. It brings the story much closer to home for the readers, and is much more sensitive than printing the death toll number. It gives intimacy to a story to follow, and a personal note to those who may recognize the face of a loved one.
I also really liked this front page. One huge problem with the media is that it only shows one side of the war. It shows the U.S. dominating over other countries and it almost never shows our country as weak or in the wrong in terms of war and battle.
What is important to remember is that while the U.S. is portrayed as a dominant force, people are paying for our country to be represented like that and this front page proves that. What strikes me the most in this picture is the text that says today is the return of the 4th Brigade of Fort Richardson for soldiers who have been gone for 14 months. In that 14 months, 53 of the soldiers did not return. It is scary to think that in only 14 short months, that many soldiers were killed in the process.
This front page makes the reader stop scanning and think about the war and how it really does effect everyone on both sides, no matter how the media portrays it.
I like both of those front pages. The war seems like it has been going on forever and it feels that many people have just put it on their back burners. The yearbook layout is very effective and gives the casualties of war recognition, reminding people that it's not over and people are still dying.
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