NEW YORK, April 26, 2004 -- Like many of us, Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's classic novel 1984, worked in a cubicle. There were three holes in the walls. The last was for the disposal of documents. "For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes," Orwell wrote. "When one knew that any document was due for destruction, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building."

Smith's job was to alter history -- or, as the official phrase put it, to 'rectify' it. I was reminded last week when the Pentagon ban on allowing us to see images of dead soldiers' homecomings at military bases was briefly broken, and hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins were released on the Internet by a Web site dedicated to battling government secrecy.

The Web site is called the Memory Hole.

Russ Kick, who operates it, describes himself as "an information archeologist." In the course of digging for truth, Kick had the good sense to file a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking pictures of coffins of the hundreds of US soldiers killed in Iraq - something executives at any mainstream news organization could have done, if they had bothered to think.

But they didn't.

"We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken," said Bill Keller of the New York Times.

"This is the first we had known that the military was shooting these pictures," said John Banner of ABC's World News Tonight.

Jim Murphy of the CBS Evening News added that he didn't "necessarily blame the military for trying to manage information in an information age."

I do. Misguided policies of censorship are often explained in terms of "protecting families." Young children must be 'protected' from Janet Jackson's breast (but not Nelly's crotch, apparently!) Viewers and readers must be 'protected' from seeing grisly images of bodies burnt in Falluja in primetime and family newspapers. And in this case, it is the sensitivity of military families that must be 'protected.'

But preventing the dissemination of these images - official photos of flag-draped coffins being treated with respect by military personnel -- seems actually designed simply to protect the President by keeping unwelcome images of the Iraq war's human cost away from us.

"This is about government censorship, not sensitivity," said Colin Crawford of the Los Angeles Times.

As Steve Capus of NBC Nightly News told the New York Times, "it would seem that the only reason somebody would come out against the use of these pictures is that they are worried about the political fallout."

Will there be political fallout from the release of the photos? The Pentagon has renewed its ban on releasing such images to the media. Fortunately, despite Big Bush's efforts, and with no thanks to the mainstream media, hundreds have already seen the light of day. Kudos to Russ Kick and the many other independent 'information archeologists" out there! In the Information Age, information wants to be free. So much so that sometimes it even forces its way back up the Memory Hole and out to the public. What we do with it then is up to us.

-- Rory O'Connor of MediaChannel.org writes a weekly column on the media for AM New York. Read other columns by O'Connor.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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