Behind the Scenes: To Publish or Not? – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
It is a scene from which many of us would naturally recoil, or at least avert our eyes: a grievously injured young man, fallen on a rough patch of earth; his open-mouthed and unseeing stare registering — who can know what? — horror or fear or shock; being tended desperately by two companions in what are the first moments of the final hours of his life.
It is a scene that plays out daily among American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one that has largely been unseen by the American public in eight years of war.
On Friday, after a couple of weeks of intramural debate and over the objections of the young man’s father (supported by the defense secretary), The Associated Press released such a photograph, by Julie Jacobson.