'Washington Post' Publishes Only a Few of Its Many Iraq-Prison Photos By Joe Strupp
Published: May 11, 2004 12:01 AM EST
NEW YORK Despite having more than 1,000 photos taken by American soldiers of life in and around the abuse-filled Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, The Washington Post has published just 10 depicting alleged mistreatment of prisoners due to concerns over incomplete information about the pictures and the "dignity of those [who are naked] in the photos," said Executive Editor Leonard Downie, Jr.
"It is only a fraction of the photos that show abuse," Downie told E&P. "Out of those, we have only published photos in which we knew what was going on in the picture. We have other photos of people with injuries and we did not know what those injuries were. We had no idea if the injuries were from abuse or not, who they are, or how the injury occurred."
Downie, who declined to say how or exactly when the photos were obtained, said they were first published starting last week, in most cases 24 hours after the paper received them. The paper's Web site, www.washingtonpost.com, offers a gallery of 10 abuse photos, but only four are credited to the Post (Click for QuikCap), with the remaining six identified as coming from The New Yorker. The Post Web site also has a gallery of nine non-abuse Iraq prison photos.
"Some of the soldiers took a lot of pictures, but some of them were tourist-like photos of their lives in and around Baghdad and the prison," Downie said.
Downie added that some of the photos of naked prisoners were either cropped or not published out of respect for those in the photos or because "they are similar to what we already published."
Several photos are running with a three-part series that began on Sunday and ends Tuesday, depicting events in the Abu Ghraib prison, life outside and around the prison, and how that particular prison fits into American detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries since the Sept. 11 attacks, Downie said.
Downie also praised the cooperation among many newspapers and magazines covering the story, such as The New York Times and The New Yorker, for sharing the images and offering credit where deserved.