BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. We know that most Americans get their news from TV and newspapers. On TV, images of war parade constantly before the eye, but newspapers are obliged to capture a single moment and let it speak for something bigger, and sometimes the still image is the one that stays with us. Vietnam was the first so-called "living room war," and we can remember watching it on TV. But we are imprinted with the still images of that war -- a little girl running down the road, screaming with pain from exposure to napalm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Some criticize today's newspapers with editing images of war too much. The New York Times has a special section full of pictures. Friday's paper showed us hungry children, crying women recovering weapons from rubble. Perhaps -- we don't know -- the worst of the violence is over now, but even in the heat of the battle most Americans could open their newspapers, reasonably assured that they would not be assaulted by images of gore. A phalanx of thoughtful editors made that decision. Was it a good one? Last week former photographer and assignment editor Jim Wilson was named picture editor at the New York Times. Jim, welcome to the show!

JIM WILSON: Thank you!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I remember back after September 11th --actually it was September 12th -- the Times was criticized for running a photo of a person falling, apparently having jumped, from one of the Towers, and the New York Times editor, Howell Raines, defended his choice and said the paper was fulfilling its journalistic responsibility. Do you think the Times would run a similarly disturbing image now or has the photo desk gotten more sensitive?

JIM WILSON: I think we would run pictures based on what the news value of the picture is. I mean that's what the, what the standard is. That's-- how we proceed in terms of what images we use. It's really about that.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:With regard to the war in Iraq, overall the pictures selected by the Times have been relatively bloodless; not many images of civilian casualties and not much gore.

JIM WILSON: If you're asking me are we taking pictures that reflect massive quantities of blood, blown-off limbs, things like that and putting those in the newspaper -- I would say that we have not used very many pictures like that, but-- that does not mean that we have not used some pictures that are like that. I remember in particular a photograph that we used of I believe it was an Iraqi civilian who had been evacuated to a medical facility. It was not used very large, but it was used in color, and it showed lots of blood on a leg that was being held up by a doctor in the background. Bloodless? I don't know. I think it comes to the question of what is gratuitous and what is not.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:As you struggle with issues of taste and issues of gratuitous violence and so on, are you convinced that you're adequately conveying the horror of war -- not to scandalize or sensationalize the war, but to show the war as it truly is?

JIM WILSON: Yes, I am convinced that we're, that we're capable of doing that and that we have done that. I don't know that I think that it's necessary to see those kinds of really gory blown-out photographs of bodies lying around -body parts - that sort of thing - to convey that. I mean we convey this in images as well as the words that are printed in the paper.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:When we compare newspaper images from domestic papers to those from the rest of the world, it's clear that the threshold for gory images is much lower here in the U.S. We simply aren't seeing the same images that European and Arab readers are. Are Americans really so turned off by the images of the violence that these are things they really don't want to see?

JIM WILSON: We've received a number of letters from people that are raising the same issue. Really more from the standpoint of wanting to make sure that we're reflecting the true nature of what the conflict is in terms of the papers abroad. I'm aware that newspapers abroad do use pictures that sometimes have a little bit harder edge than some of the ones that are used in this country.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are there any images that you wish you had run but propriety held you back?

JIM WILSON:There are a couple of pictures that --particularly early on in, in the campaign - I think that there were a couple of pictures that maybe on a second reading we might have fun. Some days you win the argument; some days you don't. But I think that's part of the rough and tumble of being at a newspaper; being at any kind of a publication.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, Jim Wilson, thank you very much!

JIM WILSON: Okay! Thank you!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jim Wilson is the picture editor at the New York Times.