Obama administration and the media

I am pretty sure that a few classes ago we were talking about the ban that was put by the government on pictures of bodies or coffins that came back form the war in Afghanistan. Well this morning while browsing the web for news I stumbled upon an article on yahoo.com from the Associated Press that talked about president Obama and how he flew to Delaware for the transfer of many fallen soldiers and how he was part of the ceremonies and was witness to the costs of war. In the article it talks about how the ban that media had on images of dead bodies in war or coffins was relaxed under Obama's administration and how now it is up to the families to decide whether or not images of their loved ones can be used in the media.

What is interesting for me about this article and the whole subject is how changes in government administration change the reach the media has to certain types of information. Also, I feel like it is a good decision from Obama to leave this decision to the families of the fallen soldiers. First of all, it would improve relationships between the government and the media which ultimately decide the image of the government that is going to be presented to the public. Also, I feel like the enforcing of this ban by George W. Bush was only damaging to the image of the government because it gave out the message that the fatalities were so many that the government could not approve of those being in the reach of the media (apart from the whole families-finding-out-by-pictures aspect, but that does not come to case at the moment). By Obama relaxing this ban I feel like he is aware of the fact that the war costs should be shown to the public and that the media can be given the access to these fatalities so they can deliver the message to the public. Lastly, I feel like this move from the Obama administration shows that it is focused on getting soldiers home soon because they would not have given access to the media to images of fatalities if they were not decided on decreasing the amount of those fatalities.