Posted on 05/13/2004 6:55:59 PM PDT by rocknotsand
So now we see in all their starkness the double standards of the western media. Day after day, the shocking images from Abu Ghraib prison have been plastered all over the media. Yes, the abuse they have revealed is disgusting and appalling and it is right that it should be exposed and that we should be horrified. But nowhere near this attention is being paid to far worse barbarism being committed by our enemies. As Jeff Jacoby observes in the Boston Globe:
Nor are the British media reporting details such as these, reported by Ariel Natan Pasko, about the behaviour of the Palestinians after the murder of the first group of Israeli soldiers in Gaza this week:
So why are some gruesome images making the political weather while others are deemed too ghastly to publish? Jonah Goldberg has drawn the obvious, if depressing, conclusion: 'Poor Nick Berg. The anybody-but-Bush crowd isn't going to rush to publicize his terrible fate with anything like the zeal it brought to the abused prisoners story. CBS and The New Yorker couldn't resist the temptation to shove the Abu Ghraib photos into the public domain -- and the rest of the media then made sure the world saw them over and over and over. But when it comes to video and stills of Al Qaeda murderers severing Berg's head with a knife and brandishing it in triumph for the camera, the Fourth Estate is suddenly squeamish. As I write on Wednesday afternoon, the CBS News website continues to offer a complete "photo essay" of naked Iraqi men being humiliated by Americans in a variety of poses. But the video of Berg's beheading, CBS says, "is too gruesome to show." No other network and no newspaper that I have seen shows the gory pictures, either.'
'Soon after the blast, Hamas terrorists excitedly displayed and played with the body parts in front of cameras. Gazan Arabs were seen dancing in the streets with pieces of the destroyed Israeli APC and pieces of dead Israeli soldiers. In another scene, shown on Israel's Channel Two TV, a Hamas gunman on a motorcycle held a bloodied burlap bag with body parts. An armed Hamas barbarian bragged how he had human remains from the APC blast, he proceeded to pull a finger out of the bag and shouted, "This is for Sheikh Yassin, and for the rest you'll pay in liberated prisoners." Fatah - Arafat's group - Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all competed to claim responsibility for the attack. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood had a piece of metal they claimed came from the APC, or a piece of human remains that they said belonged to the Israeli soldiers. And then, this macabre scene on al-Jazeera TV, hooded Islamic Jihad spokesmen, sitting and talking on camera, with a human head from a dead Israeli soldier sitting in front of them on the table, as if nothing strange was happening. It was like a scene right out of a Hollywood horror flick, with the demented evil ones right before our eyes, except this was real...'
'In 1994, ten Belgian peacekeepers were horribly mutilated alive (castrated, their Achilles tendons slashed, etc.) in Rwanda. The full extent of the barbarity wasn't disclosed for a long time for fear of reprisals. Just a month ago, television news networks agonized about how much they should show of the butchery of Americans in Fallujah. They opted for very, very little. Within 48 hours of the 9/11 attacks, the major news networks and leading newspapers were settling on a policy to stop showing images of victims leaping to their death from the World Trade Center. NBC ran one clip of a man plunging to his death, and then admitted it was a mistake. An NBC News v.p. told the New York Times, "Once it was on, we decided not to use it again. It's stunning photography, I understand that, but we felt the image was disturbing." In fact, post-9/11 coverage illuminates an interesting cultural cleavage in the media. When shocking images might stir Americans to favor war, the Serious Journalists show great restraint. When those images have the opposite effect, the Ted Koppels let it fly.'
It cannot be said too often: in the war the west is being forced to fight against demented savagery and barbarism, its own media is manipulating public opinion by warping its coverage and distorting reality to bring about the defeat of its own side. It is, quite simply, nothing less than outright treachery.
This one's clearcut. Consise. Sharp.
Like I said in a previous posting, be thankful that the press in the 1940's is not the press we have today.
First off, my own particular publication will not run any photos of dead people, and in fact we will not run photos of people who were alive at the time the photos were taken if we learn that they subsequently died before our publication goes to press. If they die after the press runs, ain't a whole lot we can do about it.
We have not run any of the Iraqi prison photos, nor have we run any of the Nick Berg photos.
I can tell you for a fact, because I've dealt with them, that the wire services run horribly graphic photos from the Mideast, especially from suicide bombings in Israel, Gaza, etc., that I'd be stunned if any publication in the U.S. runs. I remember one in particular a couple of years ago, a Reuters photo, that showed the suicide bomber's head very neatly severed from his body, sitting on the ground beside the carnage he caused.
As far as the current situation that's being discussed in this thread ... look, I'd be showing myself to be naive and/or out and out lying to you if I didn't say that there are elements in the media and otherwise who are using this stuff to get G.W. Bush and the GOP. I concede that.
However, I'd wager that the main reason photos of Nick Berg's demise haven't been run is that people aren't likely to be thrilled by images of a decapitation when they pour their morning coffee and open their morning paper. I wonder, how many of the worst of the worst photos from the Iraqi prison have actually made it into print anywhere? I'm not talking about online, I'm talking about in print. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll wager that the worst of the worst haven't made it into print, because again while I concede that there are some elements who want to use this as a club against G.W. Bush and the GOP, the bottom line for the media remains the bottom line, i.e., selling papers, and you don't sell papers by turning the readers' stomachs with overly graphic photos.
Melanie again: It is, quite simply, nothing less than outright treachery.
Come, Melanie - don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.
On, Off, or grab it for a Media Shenanigans/Schadenfreude/PNMCH ping:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~anamusedspectator/
Phillips has a LOT of good lines, and good info, in this excellent piece.
True. However, in the long term, you don't sell papers to people whose only education is at the local madrassa. Which is what their audience will be after they sell us out in the ongoing World War.
That's the problem ... only a few of us enlightened folk, certainly not the majority of the electorate of the U.S. and certainly not the powers that be in the media, see this as what it is, World War III.
I'd be interested in polling a group of witnesses from Ground Zero who saw and heard the bodies hitting the pavement about whether they think we're in WWIII.
Let's not make the same mistake this time with Islamofascism.
But again, you're dealing with a populace that IMHO has collective ADD. This September will be three years since 9/11? To a lot of folks in this country who weren't witnesses at Ground Zero other than watching on TV ... and I'm not relishing what I'm saying here, I wish to God it was different, it would make this fight so much easier ... that is history as ancient as the dinosaurs.
Here in Australia we are subjected to rampant PC groupthink reporting and avoiding anything to rile up our patriotism except sport (follow the commercials and dollars).
Stamped in our heads is the media PC headline "BALI BOMBING". What is not stamped in our heads is "BALI MASSACRE". In truth it was a massacre. A small bomb on the side of the building drove people -running not thinking- into the real firelane. The second -and huge- carbomb was parked on the street outside at the main entrance to the bar. To panic 300 people toward a bomb in a van packed with diesel and fertilizer and shrapnel is nothing other than a massacre.
If we are "bombed" we may be shocked and outraged but not gripped by a national sense of hatred and demanding our leaders act militarily. Being massacred and feeling hatred is too empowering apparently. Maybe we would acted 'unilaterally' and end-run the UN cocktail/oil concession set. Phillips is relaying the percieved message: "We don't want you to do that!"
"As I Please" column Tribune, 8 September 1944I have before me an exceptionally disgusting photograph, from The Star of August 29, of two partially undressed women, with shaven heads and with swastikas painted on their faces, being led through the streets of Paris amid grinning onlookers. The Star -- not that I am picking on the Star, for most of the press has behaved likewise -- reproduces this photograph with seeming approval.
I don't blame the French for doing this kind of thing. They have had four years of suffering, and I can partially imagine how they feel towards the collaborators. But it is a different matter when newspapers in this country try to persuade their readers that shaving women's heads is a nice thing to do. As soon as I saw this Star photograph, I thought, "Where have I seen something like this before?" Then I remembered. Just about ten years ago, when the Nazi regime was beginning to get into its stride, very similar pictures of humiliated Jews being led through the streets of German cities were exhibited in the British press -- but with this difference, that on that occasion we were not expected to approve.
Recently another newspaper published photographs of the dangling corpses of Germans hanged by the Russians in Kharkov, and carefully informed its readers that these executions had been filmed and that the public would shortly be able to witness them at the new theatres. (Were children admitted, I wonder?)
There is a saying of Nietzche which I have quoted before, but which is worth quoting again:
"He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you."
"Too long," in this context, should perhaps be taken as meaning "after the dragon is beaten."
However, I'd wager that the main reason photos of Nick Berg's demise haven't been run is that people aren't likely to be thrilled by images of a decapitation when they pour their morning coffee and open their morning paper. I wonder, how many of the worst of the worst photos from the Iraqi prison have actually made it into print anywhere? I'm not talking about online, I'm talking about in print. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll wager that the worst of the worst haven't made it into print...
"He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you."
If you have a ping list, please add me.
sorry, not 'ping list' capable.
bttt
Great piece. I'm not for publishing pictures of the beheading in the newspapers. I haven't viewed the movie, either. Those who want to see it can view it on the internet. But I am for putting the story on the front page, above the fold, of every newspaper in the country. It should be the feature story in every TV news broadcast. Anything less just shows the bias of the media.
And they should shut up about Iraqi prisoner abuse. We've heard enough. We get it. Enough already. Back to the war.
" I'd wager that the main reason photos of Nick Berg's demise haven't been run is that people aren't likely to be thrilled by images of a decapitation when they pour their morning coffee and open their morning paper...you don't sell papers by turning the readers' stomachs with overly graphic photos."
But they DO sell papers and airtime by showing photos of nude prisoners and orgies, right?
In my opinion, many in the press needs a renewed vision of their purpose...maybe a close-up and personal vision of the same floor that Nick Berg saw before he lost consciousness.
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