The most traumatizing images are yet to come. As the fetid water recedes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, decomposing bodies will turn up in the streets and homes. They will appear on our screens, pushing a nation beyond what once was considered appropriate news coverage.
Last week, viewers were shocked to see an elderly woman dead in a wheelchair, a blanket draped over her, pushed against the wall of the New Orleans convention center.
That image is now a memory from a more civilized period in the Katrina aftermath. The discretion a blanket affords is not available to the floating corpses.
Journalists are relaying pictures of the grim reality in the gulf in spite of government efforts to censor the images.
According to Reuters, "the U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims."
The news agency quoted a FEMA spokeswoman as saying, "We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media." Some will praise that request as sensitive and fitting. Others will see in it the same censorship applied to the pictures of flag-draped coffins of troops returning from Iraq. Taking a cue from reality TV, the Bush administration has learned it's all in the editing.
Journalists say they aim for a mix of aggressive and sensitive coverage.
"Our role is to show the reality," said MSNBC executive Mark Effron. "We are showing bodies but not in close-ups. Our correspondents and videographers have conveyed the sense of horror without close-ups."
"None of our people have encountered this," CNN President Jonathan Klein said of the alleged censorship. The pictures are vital, he believes. "As they drain the city you're going to see things that are very tough."
The propriety of showing such images now - as families await word of missing victims - is debatable. Why show shocking footage of what we already know is a monumentally deadly disaster? Because the images represent a crucial part of the unfolding story.
Although the sight will be objectionable to many, the decision to include them is journalistically sound.
Network executives intend to handle those pictures delicately. Expect warnings, "so you can get children out of the room," CNN's Klein said.
In the past, the camera averted its gaze from bodies. The news from Vietnam was often sanitized. Reporting on the first Gulf War was a medley of antiseptic videogame images. Even on Sept. 11, 2001, after initially showing victims jumping from the towers, the networks stopped replaying that footage out of respect to viewers' sensibilities.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sensitivities may be overruled. The presence of lifeless bodies throughout a major American city must be recorded. "Attention must be paid."
The cadavers tell a story; they are evidence in the debate in Washington: Why were there so many fatalities from a predicted natural disaster? Defenders of the administration warn against pointing fingers (former President George H.W. Bush disparages the "blame game" and makes a face as if the idea smells as bad as New Orleans). Critics of the weak, delayed rescue efforts want answers. The sight of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, crying on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" may have been as unnerving as any cadaver to come.
For now, TV offers sidebars like MSNBC's piece on "the little town that's become a morgue." In St. Gabriel, La., vans bring in 130-140 bodies per day to be "processed." Rows of caskets tell the tale.
Transfixed and traumatized, we await the visuals that may drive us from the screen even as we are compelled to watch.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
