Zoriah is a photo journalist who took photographs of the aftermath of a recent suicide bombing in Iraq. When he was asked to delete these photographs he got booted by the military and got asked to remove the photographs from his web blog.
The suicide bombing that
Zoriahphotographed happened in Anbar Province a few days ago, one of the last few days of June and more than 20 people lost their lives including a few marines. According to what
Zoriahwrote on his blog about the situation the photographer was contacted by a high ranking Public Affairs Officer who notified him about the governments request to remove any and every photograph from the
Zoriah blog. The journalist claimed that in the grizzly photos of the carnage no person was recognizable and the killed soldiers could be portrayed in images as long as their name tags and identifiable features are not shown. Furthermore,
Zoriah claimed that he made sure the images he published followed every single guideline.
Zoriaheven showed the photographs to soldiers and asked them if they could identify anyone before he posted them. You might be wondering, why would anyone publish photographs of unspeakable carnage and agony on the internet? Well, there is a reason for that as well. According to
Zoriahhis purpose was to show people in the United States what it looks like when 20 people died in a suicide bombing. The journalist continued saying that he wants people to be able to associate the numbers they hear in the media all the time with the image of the scene and the actual loss of human life.
Zoriah added that he also wanted to demonstrate why so many soldiers are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or in WWI terms “Shell Shock”. The American journalist
Zoriahclaims he was censored by the U.S. military. There are always two sides to every coin. Should the American public have access to images like that from Iraq? How would that affect public support for the war? The suicide attack that Zoriah photographed happened on June 26 when a suicide bomber attacked a city council meeting in the city of Fallujah 69 km west of Baghdad. It was a meeting between local tribal sheikhs and military officials. From the explosion
Zoriah Miller photographed, 20 Iraqis were killed and 3 Marines.