Mike Tharp: Why I did what I did

So why'd you do it?

The question asked by parents of their kids. By cops of criminals. By husbands of wives and wives of husbands.

And by a lot of you about my decision to publish -- in our newspaper and on our Web site last Saturday -- a story and photograph from The Associated Press about a young Marine dying of his wounds in Afghanistan.

To more than 50 commenters on our Web site, no answer was good enough. Nearly 100 percent of them expressed outrage over my decision. They called me unethical. Uncaring about the family of the dead Marine, who had asked the AP not to transmit the story worldwide.

They accused me of doing it to sell newspapers. They called for a boycott of the Sun-Star. They apologized to the Marine's family for the Sun-Star's action. They told McClatchy to fire me.

The issue has since gone ballistic nationwide. A debate has raged in newspapers, on TV, radio and across the blogosphere about whether the photo -- not so much the story -- should have been used by media companies all across America. Few actually did.

The Dallas Morning News ran it. Here's what managing editor George Rodrigue wrote: "Why, then, did we print it? Speaking purely for myself, it was because we owe the men and women fighting for us in Afghanistan and Iraq our full attention and understanding. Too many of us are not providing either. We are allowing them to fight, in a sense, alone. Warfare has been driven off the front page and off the TV newscasts by our economic worries or by relatively trivial fights over issues like whether President Obama should speak to schoolchildren. When unusually grim carnage makes the news, we tend to avert our eyes, perhaps telling ourselves, 'Well, they volunteered to join.' Even when we watch, much of what passes for news of the war doesn't begin to tell the real story. It doesn't fully capture the bravery and dedication of our soldiers, or the horrors endemic to any war."

I thought about running the photo again with this column. But our point was made when we published it last week. To do so again would be counterproductive. It would also needlessly antagonize those of you who took the time to register your objections.

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, ran an item Wednesday on the magazine's Web site about the controversy here. "It is interesting, and vital, to look at one case study," he wrote. Sara Sandrik of Channel 30 interviewed me Thursday for KABC in Fresno.

I posted five comments online last weekend in response to the commenters' criticism. At the risk of repetition, and banking on the premise that most of our print audience doesn't read us that much online, here they are:

I expected these reactions when I ordered that both the AP photo and story be published in our pages and on this Web site. It's my responsibility, and mine alone, at the Sun-Star. I did so because, as a veteran, a war correspondent and an editor, I feel a deep duty to show American civilians the costs of fighting a war. To show the ultimate sacrifices paid by our servicemen and women in our name. Printed words, as your comments vividly show, wouldn't have generated the same responses as the image we ran.

Those of you in the Greatest Generation can recall hundreds of far more graphic images from both World War II and Korea. Those of you in my generation can do the same about iconic images from Vietnam. But since then Americans have become desensitized to the sacrifices we ask from those we send to war. Regrettably, the American press has censored itself and failed in its mission to bear witness to what war does to people -- and not just Iraqis or Afghans ... but to mostly young Americans.