Doris Kearns Goodwin on ABC News This Week (10 July, 2016)

Speaking on ABC News This Week with host Martha Raddatz and ABC’s Chief National Correspondent Byron Pitts about the new way we are literally seeing racial tensions unfold, Doris says, “because of the video cameras, we feel what’s happening.” Photographs and moving pictures can help people to understand, to feel, a situation or story. “In World War II when we finally saw in 1943 — two years after Pearl Harbor — the first (published picture of) dead soldiers on a beach, then people suddenly understood the sacrifices that people were making. It used to be censored that you shouldn’t see dead people (in printed photographs in newspapers or magazines) and finally President Franklin Roosevelt realized the home front wasn’t understanding the sacrifices enough so he allowed that picture, that iconic picture, to be shown. Now we see people dying on Facebook. It makes you feel this tension now, which has always there – but maybe there’s a visceral level of understanding now.”