To switch gears a bit, I'd like to focus tonight on new agencies and their role and responsibility.  A question that came up today was, "Should a news agency show photos of members of the community who have been killed in war"?  I'm very divided on this issue and feel that it reveals the unenviable role of the Fourth Estate.  On the one hand, I am repulsed at the thought of showing photos of dead people at all.  When I was in France, where the media clearly operates under a more extreme (purer?) ethic, I saw images of dead U.S. soldiers as well as dead children in Iraq, and that's one of those images I still  try to get out of my mind.   I personally (and that's the operative word) would never publish photos of dead members of the community.  I feel violated when I see these things and, as a parent, I would be very upset if my children had to see these kinds of images.

And yet . . .

And yet it seems that news agencies operate under a strange code that places truth and facts and the obligation to make powerful information accessible.  Physicians pledge their careers to the preservation of life, and similarly, the Fourth Estate takes a pledge of providing any information that might lead to truth,  no matter how uncomfortable that journey might be.

And so when I return to the question of whether grisley images should be made public, my answer is that I as an individual person would not want those images posted, but it seems that the code of conduct for news agencies dictates that those kinds of images should be published.  And that's the unenviable dilemma the Fourth Estate faces.  Do you hold to your principles and do "what you're supposed to do," or do you allow competing moral imperatives to trump the "law"?