Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: 'Something dark and bloody'

RT's special report on the My Lai massacre and the cover-up of this atrocity.

THE MELBOURNE Sunday Observer -- the original newspaper of that name which campaigned against Australian involvement as a US surrogate in the Vietnam War -- published photographs of the My Lai massacre in December 1969. It was prosecuted for "obscenity" for reporting the atrocity but the charge was later dropped.

Image: David Robie from Al Jazeera

Michael Cannon was editor and David Robie chief subeditor at the time (and later the editor). The photographs were published by arrangement with Life Magazine and were later shown to Federal MPs in an attempt to change Australian government support for the war.

The photographs were published during a period when newspapers in Australia rarely published pictures of bodies, and certainly not as victims of "atrocities" by "our side". This website has a small selection of the photographs published by the Observer.

The Sunday Observer was the springboard for the launching of Nation Review in 1970: