Pat Dollard

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By JOSH GERSTEIN
U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are retreating somewhat from an effort to ban embedded journalists from publishing photos or video of American soldiers killed in action there, according to ground rules issued Thursday.

But the new limitations on embeds – put in place after a flap between the Pentagon and the Associated Press over a photo of a wounded soldier – have elicited deep concerns from military journalists and press advocates.

“It’s punishment for war photographers. They’re saying if you want access, you have to play by our rules. And our rules are this — the public will NOT see dead U.S. soldiers,” the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, said in an email. “For thorough reporting on Afghanistan, I guess we’re just going to have to rely on unembedded reporters running around on their own — posing a danger to themselves as well as the troops they’re trying to cover. It’s a trade-off. It’s very unfortunate.”

Ground rules issued Sept. 15 by the U.S. military’s regional command for Eastern Afghanistan imposed a strict ban on any imagery of American personnel killed in the fight.

“Media will not be allowed to photograph or record video of U.S. personnel killed in action,” the earlier rules said.

However, after inquiries and protests from news organizations and journalism groups, the command based at Bagram Air Base near Kabul modified the policy on Thursday.

“Media will not be prohibited from viewing or filming casualties; however, casualty photographs showing recognizable face, nametag or other identifying feature or item will not be published,” the new rules declare.

“This change better synchronizes [our] ground rules with those of our higher headquarters,” a statement issued by the military public affairs office at Bagram said.

Military officials told POLITICO earlier Thursday that the no-KIA-photos policy was under review at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.

The rules issued Thursday are at least the third revision to the embed policy since mid-September. The photo ban appears to have been put in place just days after Defense Secretary Robert Gates chastised the AP for what he called an “appalling” decision to publish a photo of a wounded 21-year-old soldier who later died, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard.

“Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me,” Gates wrote in a letter to the AP. “The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right—but judgment and common decency,” said Gat

Photographers who have embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war there in 2001 said they did not face any explicit restrictions on photographing soldiers killed in action.

The concession in the latest ground rules allowing photographs of unidentifiable war dead didn’t do much to assuage critics of the military’s restrictions on reporting.

“The question has to be asked: are you trying to censor this war?” asked Carl Prine, a military reporter for the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review. “We’ve been doing this for eight years now—eight years, and now you’re trying to change it?”

Prine said he was baffled by the demands for privacy in war. “If an American soldier dies in a car accident in the U.S., you can photograph him, but in Afghanistan you can’t?….If there’s one place no expects privacy, it’s on the battlefield.”

Asked about the latest revision, Prine said: “Still unacceptable. Don’t honor it.”

A military spokesman at Bagram noted that the rules apply only to those on official embeds with U.S. forces. “Media have multiple ways to cover the war in Afghanistan and embedding is only one of the choices available,” Master Sgt. Thomas Clementson wrote. “Embedding is a reporter’s choice and….embedded access does come with some limitations.”