Choosing an image to look at was not too difficult for me this week as I have recently been looking over a particular image for another class. The image depicts terrorists in the process of executing two Iraqi election workers after they were pulled from their car in broad daylight on Haifa Street in Baghdad. The picture is one of a series of twenty AP photographs from Iraq that were awarded the Pulitzer prize in 2005 for Breaking News Photography. The entire series of photographs are very powerful and moving images depicting a bloody yearlong conflict taking place inside this Iraqi city. Some of the images are intimate portraits of a situation entirely inconceivable and unimaginable to Americans and members of the developed world reading about it comfortably from a coffee shop; who do not risk life and limb every time they step out their front door. These tragically beautiful photographs won the Pulitzer prize because of the all-important service they do; they provide us with just a taste of what this other world is like, if only for a fleeting moment. The importance and power of these photographs I feel is undeniable.

However, this particular photo is marred in controversy. Before it won the prize and then much more afterward it was greatly questioned by conservative bloggers. They wanted to know what the photographer was doing there. Being so close as he obviously is to the action, why did he apparently have no fear of the terrorists and why were the terrorists apparently unconcerned with being photographed in the midst of an execution? Did the photographer have advanced knowledge of the crime and was he possibly accompanying the terrorists? Not much has been disclosed or discovered in the time since this photo came out. The AP chose not to reveal the photographers name, sourcing him only as “AP stringer”, citing “safety concerns”. A source at the Associated Press did comment to Salon that claims of foreknowledge of a public execution were “ridiculous” and that the photographer was most likely "tipped off to a demonstration that was supposed to take place on Haifa Street".

I think that claims that an AP photographer was working with terrorists and not reporting possible murders simply to get the exclusive photos are absurd. I think the bigger ethical dilemma is how much do you comply with a radical group's requests to document their activity and what are the possible implications of that? In this instance the photographer captured an extremely important moment on film, but he also gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted. The reason they took election workers out of their car and publicly executed them in broad daylight was to strike fear into others working on elections and in the government. Publishing the photographs has increased their audience for this message exponentially. It's an extremely difficult ethical question to answer, do you sit on important and vivid photos that tell a story readers need to hear, or do you publish the photos giving the terrorist organization the soap box they desire?

It's an extremely difficult question and one that I am not sure can be answered indiscriminately every time. What I am sure of is the power of photography and the power of the truth. Photos have a crucial role to play in the press; nothing has the power to inform and move someone so simply and immediately. Photos such as the AP series from Iraq tell a story that words never could, and that makes momentous photos such as the one above invaluable.