US military defends deleting AP images from Afghanistan

The US military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists’ footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions. The comments came March 9 in response to an Associated Press protest that a US soldier had forced two freelance journalists working for the US-based news agency to delete photos and video at the scene of violence March 4 in Barikaw, eastern Afghanistan. At least eight Afghans were killed and 34 wounded. ‘Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document,’ Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top US commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter March 9. He added that photographs or video taken by ‘untrained people’ might ‘capture visual details that are not as they originally were.’ The Associated Press disputed the assertions. (AP via Editor and Publisher,March 12, 2007)

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