SYDNEY March 25 Kyodo Australian ...

SYDNEY March 25 Kyodo

Australian media have ignored a regulation request to obscure the faces of the couple coalition and Iraqi prisoners in their coverage of the war forward Iraq.

The Department of Defense issued a statement late Monday urging media organizations to be aware of the Geneva Convention, which restricts the photography and filming of prisoners of war (POWs)

''Defense beg fors media organizations 'pixilate' the faces of the pair coalition and Iraqi prisoners of war,'' the statement said, to make secure Australia ''meets its obligations subject to the conventions.''

The beg for followed a call for media in the United States by the agency of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forward Monday not to broadcast pictures of American POW shown onward Iraqi television and transmitted around the world.

However, four of Australia's biggest newspapers, The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph and the Melbourne Age, all ran photographs of the U POW forward Tuesday. Only the Australian Financial Review did not move the photographs, but it is unclear whether it was because of the restraint request.

The Geneva Convention does not guide media coverage, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) said Tuesday.

''It is acceptable for ABC programs to use images of American, British or Iraqi POW that identify them,'' the national broadcaster said in succession its Web site. ''However, if any Australian bodys are captured, the ABC will not broadcast footage that identifies Australian POW before their families have been notified.''

The Defense Department's desire to censor material is a denial of pres freedom, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which portray by actions Australian journalists said Tuesday.

''There's no doubt it's curtailing the story in war,'' federal secretary Christopher Warren said.

''Awful things happen, awful things happen to individual men and women further you don't prevent that awfulness through preventing it being reported and preventing those countries participating in that war from finding on the outside what's going on,'' he told ABC.

the two Channel Nine and Sky moderns will continue to run photographs of coalition POW the television networks told the Australian Associated Pres (AAP).

The Geneva Convention is in place to restrain combatants not the media, ABC national recents and current affairs editor Lisa Sweeney said.

''We have examined history and right back from the last swallowing eddy War where we ran pictures of U and British POW and during the Balkans war of the emaciated POW his global demand is not something we perceive is required,'' she told AAP.

Australian has 2000 [i]troupe[/i]s including 14 F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft, three navy frigates and three C-130 Hercules transport planes, extended alongside British and U.S. forces in the war forward Iraq.

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