Photographer & husband lose contractor jobs over photo publication

A couple days ago, I posted a copy of the photograph Tami Silicio had taken of a number of coffins in a military transport on the way back to the US. Today I hear that both she and her husband have been fired from their jobs with one of the contractors in Kuwait.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. contractor and her husband have been fired after her photograph of 20 flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers going home from Iraq was published in violation of military rules.

"I lost my job and they let my husband go as well," Tami Silicio, who loaded U.S. military cargo at Kuwait International Airport for a U.S. company, told Reuters in an e-mail response to questions.

The Pentagon tightly restricts publication of photographs of coffins with the remains of U.S. soldiers and has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base, the first stop for the bodies of U.S. soldiers being sent home.

The military says the policy is in place to protect the privacy of families of those killed, but critics have said the rules are aimed at sanitizing the war for the public.

The Seattle Times printed Silicio's photograph last weekend and again on Thursday. The picture shows soldiers tending to 20 coffins completely covered with American flags on April 7 inside a military cargo plane at the Kuwait airport.

Silicio, who was raised in the Seattle area, was not paid by the newspaper for the picture, which a friend in the United States, Amy Katz, passed on to the newspaper. Katz said she had since found an agent to sell the photograph.

Now, it's true enough that she violated both military and corporate policy by having the picture published, and she was aware of the potential consequences when she did so. I may not agree with the policy and I may not like the result of it, but it is what it is, and she was aware of it. What I don't understand is what her husband did that justified his firing also. Guilt-by-association?

Posted by thorswitch at April 22, 2004 04:39 PM | TrackBack