Posted on 06/18/2002 3:45:54 PM PDT by weegee
I went to the Boston Phoenix's Web site two weeks ago and read its argument for linking readers to the full video of Daniel Pearl's murder. I clicked on the link and watched as Pearl spoke into the camera, acknowledging his Jewishness and other things. Everything was blacked out except Pearl's head. It was clear that his remarks were edited and made under duress, so they were not his own.
Then I turned it off. I didn't have the heart or stomach to watch the rest. I know what happens. His throat is slit and his head is cut off. Even if I hadn't known that already, the Phoenix decorated the article on its Web site with a picture of Pearl's severed head being held aloft.
It filled me with disgust, the act, the video and the newspaper's decision to help make it available. Let's take them one at a time.
The act was a crime, deeply cruel, that was primarily intended to spread fear. The video is designed to make the killers' handiwork public, which helps spread fear and which the killers presumably hope will recruit eager Islamists to their cause.
Unless the world is considerably more depraved than I imagine, it can only backfire in this latter attempt. Surely even those opposed to U.S. policy and our way of life are still human enough to be repulsed by such a display. When I was in Mogadishu in 1997, I met many Somalis who confessed horror and embarrassment at the fact (also captured on film) that angry mobs of their countrymen had dragged the dead bodies of U.S. soldiers through the streets after the 1993 battle of Mogadishu.
At least that was done in anger, after many hundreds of Somalis had been killed. The video of Pearl's execution inhabits a darker realm of depravity. It is calculated, crafted like a work of art. Which is what makes the Phoenix's decision to feature it so wrong.
Decisions about whether to show images of atrocity are always difficult ones for the press. Pictures, especially moving pictures, are often more powerful than words. I had read many times the stories of brave young idealists who opposed the Nazis in the years before World War II, but no words ever stirred me as much as a sequence of photographs in the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans showing the hangings of two, a young man and woman. The look of stoical defiance on their faces in the moments before their deaths is a study in moral courage.
Likewise, the terrible images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu conveyed better than any story how the American humanitarian effort in Somalia had gone disastrously awry.
Deciding whether to use such images is an exercise in judgment and taste. In modern times, everything gets published or broadcast somewhere. Overall, it's a boon to mankind that technology has made it impossible to control information. It's also a good thing that anyone with access to a computer and modem can disseminate their ideas and their art. But along with the best of human expression, it also invites the worst.
What the Internet lacks, by definition, is editing. Since there is no filter, there is no judgment and no taste. The Internet is where you can find anything.
I agreed with CBS' decision last month to air an edited portion of the Pearl murder video, because the fact that it had been made and posted on the Internet by his killers was news. It revealed much about the character of our nation's enemies. But CBS stopped short of showing Pearl's final humiliating moments, and his beheading.
There is nothing honest about the video. It is not made by a journalist, but a propagandist. Pearl's final words were scripted by his killers, and the images on the video are edited to convey only the message they intend, a narrow focus on horror and gore, like an extreme close-up in a porn flick. It makes sense only as a form of sick shock entertainment, and it puts the Phoenix in the same league as the old tabloids that published gory crime-scene photographs. This video was already out there on the Internet for anyone determined enough to find it. All the Phoenix did was shine a light on it.
There is no question of the paper's right to do so. Even if we wanted to censor the video, we could not.
Millions of Americans get Al Jazeera, the Arab cable news station, in their living rooms. The computer is even more democratic. I knew the moment I learned there was a video of Pearl's murder that it would eventually be available on the Internet. But that alone doesn't mean it's important to watch it.
-------- Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. ----------
I agree, it should be shown. Many media outlets neglected to mention that he was even decapitated on camera in the original reports of the killing.
I found what CBS did to be much more exploitive. A) It occurred during sweeps week. B) The excerpt that they broadcast only showed his tortured/forced statement; that serves the purpose of their propaganda. Show what the enemy is capable of. Mention how on camera decapitations are routine for these people around the world (hardly isolated to one group of muslims that just happens to be getting it wrong).
I found this quote while trying to see if this article was already posted:
Dan Rather defended as necessary to "understand the full impact and danger of the propaganda war being waged."
The Hell with the propaganda war being raged, I'm concerned with the life or death war that they are waging against us. Meanwhile the media keeps quiet, blurs the lines of distinction (AP won't call the 9-11 killers "terrorists", Palestinians are using the only weapons they have, etc.).
I certainly see more reason to show this than the body of a soldier being dragged through the streets. I believe that his family and friends found the defiling of his corpse to be much more offensive than any footage of 9-11 attack victims could have been.
I think it's a delicate balance right now for media and the administration. Too much "knowledge" get's out, muslims in this country can kiss their asses good bye..
yup.
The fact that they thought turning the film of Daniel Pearl's execution into a "commercial" to "persuade" us to beg our government to free the prisoners in Guantanamo, get out of Afghanistan, etc. shows just how insane these barbarians are.
The sooner we stop deceiving ourselves about the nature of our enemy, the sooner we will take the kid gloves off and settle the score. Anything else is like trying to negotiate with the Nazis.
The attrocities that are committed are state supported. Suicide attackers' families are paid for the commitment. That they appear to operate as "lone gunmen" does not hold water and will never lead to a conclusion. Give the arab states all of Israel and there will still be unrest.
Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe 20 years from now, we will be bombing them into submission. It seems that everyone blocked the pain of September 11th, 2001 out of their minds already. Our enemies are laying in wait.
To say that making this video available is a lack of decency is like saying that we should close all the holocaust museums and bury the photos in the name of decency. We don't because we owe it to those victims to let the world know what happened.
They did not even make a direct appeal in the name of family privacy.
I'd rather see the original untampered video than the one with the propaganda text superimposed on the screen.
Someone was producing VCDs (that can play in DVD players and on PCs) of the September 11th footage including things like the Jaws theme as the plane approaches the WTC. Our enemies don't consider us to be equals. We need to know this is how they act behind closed doors.
Why do you think there is so much sympathy for the Jews that made it through the holocaust? Its because we can not get away from those images.
In the same way we should be reminded of the airplanes hitting the WTC, Pearl's death, and the demonstrations in Muslim countries celebrating the terrorism.
Do not forget.
If showing the video would actually fulfill the terrorists' wishes (i.e., spread fear), then I would agree with Bowden and wish it not to be seen.
But the terrorists misunderstimated(tm) us. Showing the video would only create coast-to-coast anger and steely resolve against the terrorists, not fear.
Show it.
No sir, we dont. We saw 9/11. We saw infants being burned alive. Old ladies being torn apart by jet fuel. And janitors jumping out of skycrapers. We will be at war with Saudi Arabia soon anyways, so why do we need to see more?
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