The casket of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers is lowered to the tarmac on April 5 at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. This was the first such transfer to be photographed by the press under new Pentagon rules.
It was the first time during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Americans have seen press coverage of such a ceremony, known in the military as a dignified transfer.
On Friday the Pentagon released the details of its new policy on media coverage of dignified transfers. The next day, Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, 30, of Hopewell, Va., died when an improvised explosive device exploded while he was on duty in Afghanistan. His wife became the first military family member to consent to media coverage under the new policy.
The photo ban was supposed to be officially lifted April 6, but everything was ready when the plane carrying Myers’s casket arrived in Delaware late April 5. Photographers say the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center (AFMOA) handled the press setup with professionalism.
“The military takes it incredibly seriously,” says Joshua Roberts, a freelance photographer based in Washington who covered the transfer for Reuters. “It’s a very formal, very respectful transfer... Hiding it is not really a good thing. It’s good to show it.”
The AFMOA Public Affairs office sent an e-mail alert to media outlets at 2:45 p.m. Sunday. Journalists were told to assemble at a parking lot in Dover at 9 p.m., where a bus met them and took them to the base. There, they received a briefing about what to expect and were taken to a press enclosure on the tarmac. The ceremony took place just after 11 p.m. and lasted less than 15 minutes. About 25 journalists from wire services, newspapers and TV networks attended.
Media coverage of dignified transfers is a sensitive topic for military families, and the policy change drew criticism on pro-military blogs and elsewhere. The media policy requires the consent of the service member’s next of kin. No one knew how long it would take before a family said yes. It turned out it only took one day.
“I wasn’t surprised. At Arlington Cemetery, families are given the same option and a lot of them say yes,” says Getty Images photographer Mark Wilson, who covered the Dover ceremony.
Myers's was one of two caskets unloaded at Dover on Sunday. The other carried a soldier who died before the policy took effect. Photographers were only allowed to photograph the casket of Staff Sgt. Myers.
The media agreed not to photograph Myers’s family, who declined to be interviewed. The family stood next to a van where journalists couldn’t see them.
The rules also banned flashes, live broadcasts, interviews with military personnel and “unnecessary noise or movement.” Photographers who were there say everyone followed the rules. When the ceremony ended the Dover public affairs personnel thanked them for being respectful.
Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, who covered the transfer, says the event showed “the relationship between the media and the military doesn’t have to be adversarial.” Vucci spent the past year working on a documentary project about a group of soldiers deployed to Iraq. He said he’s learned that many military families want their stories told, including those who have had family members killed. “I’ve seen those families and they wanted us to be there,” Vucci says.
The footage and photographs of Myers’ dignified transfer were getting widespread attention.
Despite the late hour of the event, The Washington Post published a three-column, above-the-fold photograph from the ceremony on its front page. TV networks and other outlets posted stories on their Web sites.
The News Journal in Wilmington, the closest major paper to Dover, ran a front-page photo above a story headlined “Arrival of fallen troops at Dover no longer secret.”
Even the Defense Department posted high-resolution photos of the ceremony on the home page of its Web site.
There is no single defining image of the event, especially since all the photographs were shot from roughly the same place, at about a 45-degree angle from the rear of the airplane. Photographers said they weren’t sure if their editors would keep sending photographers back to cover every transfer, but some expected the number of media covering the events to taper off.
At The News-Journal, director of photography Ron Soliman says his paper will continue to cover the transfers. "We are the local paper here. Every opportunity we can get we're going to be there," Soliman says, adding that the paper has two photographers based in Dover.
As of Sunday, AFMOA said it had received 80 registrations from media outlets to be on the coverage list, and had plans in place for pool coverage if a large number of journalists asked to cover a particular transfer.
The photo ban was put in place in 1991 by President George Bush and has been waived on a few occasions. But there has been no media coverage of the returning caskets of the more than 4,000 troops killed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Government photographs of the returning service members have only been seen occasionally. Media outlets and researchers have obtained a few photographs through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests.
A few weeks after President Barack Obama took office, Defense officials signaled they were open to changing the policy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the policy change in February.
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