While reading the NY Times' nonsense mea culpa, I recalled a detail from a column by the Oregonian's public editor from a couple of months ago, regarding a debate on publishing photos of the Fallujah body-abuse incident:

"John Harvey, who oversees national and
international wire stories, said the news
event was not significant enough to merit
running a photo of bodies. The newspaper
avoids showing the bodies of people killed in
bombings in the Middle East, he said, even
though such bombings could affect the peace
process. Harvey said the Iraq situation was
different from Somalia, where the corpse of
a U.S. soldier was dragged through the streets
in 1993. A wire service photo of that appeared
inside The Oregonian; that photo won a Pulitzer
Prize and arguably influenced U.S. policy. "This
is not going to change policy," Harvey said.

"But editor Len Reed argued for publishing a photo
on Page One, saying editors shouldn't presume it
won't affect U.S. policy. Reed argued that the
photos reflect the U.S. quagmire in Iraq in a
way that no stories or images have done before.
Reed likened a photo of bodies hanging from the
bridge to iconic photos from Vietnam that changed
Americans' views of war. "This is such a searing
set of images," he said. "I don't feel comfortable
withholding that from readers."" [from the
Sunday Oregonian, 4/4/2004, page F01 -- online
only in the paid archive]

I believe they were right to show the pictures. I am uncomfortable with how they arrived at that decision, particularly with the aspect of this debate concerning influencing U.S. policy. As the "quagmire" and Vietnam references show, Mr. Reed probably hoped to influence the administration against its current course in Iraq.

Should such influence be a legitimate goal of the newspaper? Or rather should their goal be to inform rather than influence? Would it be right to have published the photos with the intent to inflame public opinion in order to expand the war rather than curtail it?