In Letter To Dead Soldier's Family, Times Apologizes Over Images

 

AUSTIN, TX (February 2, 2007) – The New York Times said today that it will apologize to the family of a Texas soldier for publishing a photograph and video showing U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Hector Leija wounded and dying after being shot during combat operations in Baghdad. A spokesperson for the Times said the letter “explaining the process … and expressing regret” is part of an agreement it reached with the Army during two days of discussions about the incident, as well as talks with the military about Times journalists continuing to be embedded with American troops.

“The New York Times is extremely sensitive to the loss suffered by families when loved ones are killed in Iraq. We try to write with respect and compassion for the inevitable losses. We believe the article was a portrait of Sergeant Leija’s courage under fire and showed how much his men respected and cared for him,” Abbe Ruttenberg Serphos wrote today from New York City. She is the director of public relations for The New York Times Company.

The Army had objected to the Times’ publication of a still photograph of Leija, 27, a native of Raymondville, TX, after he was shot in the head by a single bullet while on patrol to clear insurgents from apartments on Haifa Street in Baghdad on January 24, as well as video of Leija leading his soldiers on patrol before he was shot and troops treating and evacuating him after he was wounded, not long before he died from the injury.

The story and a picture showing the critically-wounded Leija on a stretcher, with a medic’s hand compressing the bullet wound on his forehead, were published in The New York Times on Monday. The accompanying story noted that Leija died a few hours after he was shot. On Monday afternoon video of the patrol and the aftermath of Leija being shot was posted on the newspaper’s Web site.

The still image has apparently been removed from the Web site, but the video is still online.

The Houston Chronicle reported that town leaders and employees at the Chamber of Commerce in Raymondville, a small Texas town where they have been asked to help arrange some aspects of a public funeral for the soldier, said that members of Leija’s family were very upset by the images. The family did not wish to comment directly to the press, the story said.

Monday’s story in the Times was written and narrated by reporter Damien Cave and photographed by Robert Nickelsberg of Getty Images, a contract photographer who was on assignment for the Times.

After Leija was shot in Baghdad, Army officers said the Times had violated the terms of their embedding agreement by publishing the photo and video of the soldier “without Leija’s consent,” and Cave and Nickelsberg were reportedly banned from further embedding with American troops.

“After two days of discussions with the military headquarters, including a conversation between [Times executive editor] Bill Keller and [Army Lt.] General [Raymond T.] Odierno, the issue has now been resolved in a way that we think satisfies the military, the soldiers, The Times, and its readers,” Serphos wrote to News Photographer. “Damien Cave and Robert Nickelsberg will be able to embed with American military units in Iraq.” An earlier statement from the Times also said that “a representative of The New York Times Baghdad bureau and the military will meet soon to be certain that both sides are on the same page about the rules of the embed agreements.”

The Times’ spokesperson said the letter they will send to Leija’s family will “explain the process we go through to notify families and why we run the articles and photographs we do, and express regret that the family suffered distress.”

Serphos also said that the Times did not violate their embedding agreement in this incident. “In terms of notification, we did not run the article or the photographs until Sergeant Leija’s family had been notified of his death. We also took extraordinary measures to make sure that the family knew an article and a video were going to be published. The military assured us that they would notify the family that an article and a video were going to be published. We have run pictures of the wounded in the past, without objection from the military. We also tried to contact the family both by calling their home, where there was no answer, and by reaching out to a local school principal and a Congressional liaison office working with the family to make sure they knew how to contact us in case of any concerns.”

Leija was on his second tour of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is the second soldier from Raymondville to die in Iraq since 2003. Army Spc. Jessie Davila, 29, of Raymondville was killed in February 2006 in a bomb attack.

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