Columbia Crew Coffins Mistaken for Caskets of U.S. Military Casualties

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ryc asualties

By Anthony Duignan-Cabrera
Managing Editor, SPACE.com



UPDATE: Story first posted 5:30 p.m. EDT, April 23, 2004


It is a story that will have journalism professors, conspiracy
theorists and free speech advocates confused, amused and most likely
up-in-arms until the next media scandal appears.


On Friday, NASA sent out a press release saying that several news
organizations had mistakenly identified pictures of the flag-draped
coffins of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew with images of coffins of
war casualties from Iraq (news - web sites).


The story began Thursday when the free speech website
thememoryhole.org published what it said were images of the coffins of
U.S. military personnel who had died while on duty in Iraq. The images
had been released to the site because of a Freedom of Information Act
request.


However, eagle-eyed NASA (news - web sites)-watchers as well as NASA
employees recognized the images to be from February 2003, when the
remains of the space shuttle's crew were brought to the Dover Air
Force Base in Dover, Delaware.


According to NASA spokesperson Bob Jacobs, the error was first brought
to his attention Thursday evening by Keith Cowing, the editor of the
website NASAwatch .


"(Cowing) was the very first person to notify me because he saw (the
picture) on CNN's Headline News," Jacobs said.


The fact that NASA Deputy Administrator Frederick Gregory featured
prominently in one of the pictures on the website's homepage may have
been a clue. [see images on SPACE.com]


At first, Jacobs thought it was a one-off mistake, but his opinion
changed Friday morning when another NASA public affairs official
called to tell him that the image had appeared in the morning's
Washington Post.


"We thought (CNN) was a freak accident," Jacobs said. "We didn't know
the pictures were posted on a website."


As the day wore on, Cowing collected a list of news organizations,
including Reuters and the Associated Press, that kept referring to the
images as those of the coffins of U.S. military personnel.


The NASA press statement, released late in the afternoon, asked
editors to "confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact
those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who
were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy."


"An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site
www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from
Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors
rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts."


The brief press release went on to say that "news organizations across
the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the
web site."


Russ Kick, editor of thememoryhole.org, was not immediately available
for comment.


Jacobs said NASA contacted the Columbia crew's family members to let
them know that the images of their loved ones' coffins were being
misidentified in the media.





"We wanted to make them aware of the situation, just in case they were
watching CNN or reading a publication that uses one of the photos,"
said Jacobs.