Pictures Don't Lie . . . Or Do They

Some forty years ago during the notorious Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, photographer Eddie Adams took a horrific shot that became an emblem of all that was wrong with the war. In the photo, a South Vietnamese general is shooting a captured Viet Cong prisoner in the head. That photo, while "true," doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't tell about the American soldiers that this prisoner had just killed. More significantly, it doesn't tell about the carnage, chaos, and confusion swirling throughout South Vietnam in those days. It doesn't tell about the many, many executions being performed by invading North Vietnamese troops during those same days. Forty years later, even the photographer has issues with his work, for which he won a Pulitzer.

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe
them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only
half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were
the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called
bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?"

I mention this not to suggest that we all play revisionist historians. That war was a long time ago, probably long before you were born, unless you're one of the oldest of my students. Instead I share this in hopes that all of us will take pains to realize that evidence does not always speak as authoritatively as we think it does. Because photos and other sources can lie--or at least tell a partial and misleading truth--we must be constantly vigilant.