The number of American troops wounded in Iraq surpasses the number killed by thousands, but US media still appear reluctant to place their stories on the front page.

Seeing the wounded might give people second thoughts, which is certainly not in the interest of a government pushing the war.

Leo Braudy

Indeed, media outlets seem to be treading lightly in their coverage of such sensitive wartime topics for fear of being branded "anti-war" or angering the Pentagon, which has forbidden the publication of photos showing caskets of the war dead arriving in the United States.

While more than 2,000 soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the conflict began, US military officials have tallied nearly 16,000 wounded, including 7,837 who were seriously injured.

As for the wounded, US media outlets occasionally produce a feature story showing these soldiers adapting to their new lives. And a select few have highlighted the difficulties faced by returning soldiers who were wounded or maimed, including personal problems, professional struggles and difficulty in obtaining disability benefits.

Among those calling attention to these struggles is Garry Trudeau, whose comic strip "Doonesbury" -- which appears in 140 US newspapers every day -- chronicles the recovery efforts of a wounded soldier who is battling depression.

"When you've got a nation fighting a war and ... the one place in the mainstream media that seems to be doing the most about the wounded of that war is a comic strip, I think that speaks volumes," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Leo Braudy, a professor at the University of Southern California and the author of a book on the military, said that soldiers with psychological problems are rarely spoken of.

"The government generally wants to keep it under wraps," he said.

"No 'Born on the 4th of July' stories anywhere in sight," Thompson said, referring to the 1989 film in which Tom Cruise plays a Vietnam War veteran and amputee who becomes a fierce anti-war protester.

"Most stories have generally been uplifting celebrations of their bravery," he said, noting that with such a staggering number of wounded, "most stories are probably not nicely packageable in those kinds of terms."

But Thompson said that media outlets' selectivity in determining coverage has little to do with their audience's comfort level or sensitivity.

"There's no reason to believe if you had a whole bunch of really grisly stories -- and I'm sure there are grisly stories out there -- people wouldn't watch them," Thompson said.

But "seeing the wounded might give people second thoughts, which is certainly not in the interest of a government pushing the war," Braudy pointed out.

Several times, newspapers and television networks have even been taken to task for merely naming dead soldiers, with some slamming the move as a political ploy.

Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse.

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