During a demonstration on September 27, Japanese photojournalist Nagai Kenji was killed while reporting on the ongoing unrest in Myanmar.
Initially, news reports were that Nagai had likely been struck by a “stray bullet” when security forces opened fire on protestors. However, as written by Hosaka Nobuto, an opposition politician, in his blog [1]entry:
昨日の夜、日本人ジャーナリスト長井健司さんが死亡したというニュースが飛び込んできた。当初は、「流れ弾にあ たったのか」とも言われたが、1メートルの至近距離からビデオ撮影中に銃撃されたという情報も出てきており、軍事政権兵士によるジャーナリスト殺害であっ た可能性も高い。
Last evening, it was reported that Japanese journalist Nagai Kenji had died. Initially, it was said that he had been “struck by a stray bullet,” but information has emerged that he was shot from a distance of one meter while taking video images, and it seems likely that this was the murder of a journalist by soldiers of the military government.
Needless to say, there are a number of bloggers who have written that Nagai brought this on himself by exposing himself to the line of fire. And many others have condemned the Myanmarese military regime for its violations of human rights.
One interesting part of this drama was the use of pictures. The morning and evening editions of Asahi Shimbun [2] carried the same picture, but the photo in the morning edition was trimmed to avoid showing Nagai lying on the ground after being shot. As described by blogger coral_island [3],
2枚の写真をよく見てください。実は全く同じ写真なのです。朝刊ではわざわざ銃を構える治安部隊員と、倒れている長井健司さんを外してトリミングをしているのです。同じ写真であるのにこうした細工をすることによって、全く印象の違うものになってしまっています。
Look at the two pictures. They are absolutely identical. In the morning edition, they deliberately trimmed the picture to avoid showing Nagai Kenji and the soldier who shot him. The pictures give a totally different image.
What is particularly interesting about this case is that in general, the Japanese media do not show pictures of bodies. But in the evening edition of Asahi, Nagai is shown on the ground, still trying to film despite being fatally wounded.
Blogger Kyo no My News [4] gives an idea of why, in the Nagai case, this principle might have been waived.
それにしてもテレビは、人が撃たれるところなんかを、平気で流すようになったね。ドラマじゃなくて、本当に起きていることなのに。長井さんの場合は、映像では、撃たれて倒れているけれど、まだ生きていて、“死体”じゃないからいい、とでも言うのだろうか。