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US Army vs. Michael Yon
It is one of the iconic images of the Iraq War.A U.S. soldier in khaki fatigues gently cradles a bloody Iraqi girl in the muddy streets of Mosul. Blogger Michael Yon snapped the photo May 2, 2005, moments after a suicide bomber attacked the unit he was embedded with. The little girl, Farah, died on her way to the hospital. The next day, the picture ran in hundreds of newspapers and TV news shows throughout the world. It hit the front page of the Washington Post. USA Today. Fox News. ABC News. Time magazine. The exposure should have been a career highlight for an independent journalist trying to get his coverage noticed. While millions of people saw the photo in their morning newspapers and thousands more logged onto his blog Yon could barely stand to see the picture. "I was still upset about the bombing," he said. "There were months I couldn't even look at the photo." He never wanted it to get out. He told Army officials they could use the photo in internal training manuals. Instead, they put it on the news wires, originally attributing it only as a U.S. Army photo without Yon's name. The Army's decision to release the photo has Yon, widely considered one of the most pro-military voices covering the war, readying a copyright infringement lawsuit. In an Oct. 13 letter to Yon denying his request for compensation for the alleged infringement, Army intellectual property lawyer Alan Klein wrote that Yon had given up his right for compensation when he signed the standard liability form all embedded journalists must sign. The form states that Yon agreed to "release the (military) of any liability from and hold them harmless for any injuries I may suffer or any equipment that may be damaged as a result of my covering combat." In his letter, Klein argues that an injury to Yon's copyright is the same as an injury to his leg or his camera. The release frees the Army "from any liability for any injury he may suffer," Klein wrote. "The claimant asserts he was injured by the distribution of his copyrighted works to the news media. This release absolves the Army of any liability for that injury." The Army contends that because Yon shared the photo with the soldiers in his embed unit, he should have understood the photo could be distributed further. "(W)hen embedded journalists voluntarily share some of their photos with the Soldiers and units that they live and work with, typically through email, embeds fully understand that those individuals and units may distribute them," Lt. Col. Pamela Hart of Army Public Affairs wrote in an email. Yon's attorney, John Mason, is trying to regain as much control over the photo as possible. He has asked dozens of news organizations to remove it from their archives unless they were willing to pay a substantial licensing fee. Mason and Yon granted the Daily Southtown permission to run the photo for free because the paper was writing this article specifically about the photo's back-story. If Yon moves ahead as planned with his suit against the Army, the photo could become a symbol of press rights in the military embed program. Alicia Wagner Calzada, president of the National Press Photographers Association, said the Army's rationale for denying compensation appears questionable. "(Yon) owns the copyright to that photograph," she said. "I would certainly never embed on the grounds of turning over my copyright to the military." Yon wants people to know that he is not a military shill. He worries that the way his most famous photo got out to the world may have tarnished that image. "I really am as fiercely independent as the Kurds are," he said. "The only thing I had was my independence. That was it." Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-02-02 |
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