Why media coverage is circumspect over remains at WTC ( Media use FEMA footage)

USAToday ^ | September 27, 2001 | Peter Johnson

[testforecho]

Because so-called ground zero is a crime scene as well as one of an ongoing search-and-rescue effort, network camera crews have been prohibited from the World Trade Center disaster site in New York.

And that means that ever since two planes crashed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, local and network news organizations have largely relied on video shot by two Federal Emergency Management Agency public affairs officers who have been documenting the often heartbreaking and poignant efforts at the scene.

[testforecho]

FYI for those asking why we don't see more detail of recovery efforts

[FlyVet]

One of the ministers on the scene was interviewed on the 700 Club last week. He said they were "ankle to knee deep in body parts". It must have been awful beyond imagination.

[cajungirl]

The details we have seen and heard about are enough for me. These men deserve our everlasting thanks. Plus a big bonus, wonder if someone should do that. They are going to have this in their hearts forever.

[Bekki4Bush]

I agree, but some here on FR have complained that this is censorship. I think it is a matter of simple decency and I am glad. Can you imagine the covers of mags like the Star, etc. at the check outs if they got in there?....shudder

[SES1066]

Am I detecting an excess 'blockquote' here? Now lets see.

Coverage of the WTC rescue, recovery and removal site has been fine by me. I know that the workers are handling the situation as well as possible from every report that I hear. What a horrible but necessary job.

[Jack Black]

I disagree. It is what it is. We have a free press, it is for them, not FEMA to decide what they wish to print. National Security is a reason to censor stories. Blood is not. I agree with Michael Savage that this is being done in part to prevent Americans from rising up in righteous indignation and demanding retribution now. The "crime scene" angle is BS. They could put in a "pool" photographer from AP and he would shoot acording to professional photo journalist standards, not FEMA ones. Once again the Constitution takes the short end.

[ChemistCat]

Holocaust footage of starving bodies heaped in mountainous piles serves an important historical purpose. I don't know how you balance that with respecting the families and the obvious pain these images are going to cause. But I'm very much afraid that if we sterilize this event, make it as pretty and as innocuous as possible, we will have social disconnect and denial. I have this sad lost feeling that we NEED to know EXACTLY what was done to us. We need to see the wound, count the stitches, LOOK at it and come to grips with it rather than hide it neatly beneath some curtain of government censorship. I don't want to look at it. I really don't. But I know darn well that if we didn't have the visual evidence of what happened at Dachau, at Auschwitz, in Cambodia and all the places where humankind turned into demons capable of unspeakable acts, we will NOT keep in mind what the culprits really are. It will become to us some kind of vague accident, like any other explosion, crash, or fire. It is HARD ENOUGH to try to comprehend and believe in evil. Many liberals don't even TRY. If we shy away from the proof of it, we fall into the trap of being ready to excuse it. There will be nothing visceral to hold our attention and make our will to punish the culprits remain focused.

Without the PROOF would we be willing to accept that 6 Million Jews were exterminated in cruel conditions in Central Europe in the 1940s? Some people still deny that.

[AUsome Joy]

I knew a girl who used to edit and catalog footage for CNN. She would have to go through all the footage of bombings, etc. She said it was awful. She requested a move to the comedy channel so she wouldn't have to look at it any more.

[eno_]

Well it has to be hellish. I understand the argument for decorum, but heck, this is the Internet age. There has to be a truthful firsthand account somewhere!

[gcruse]

 There will be nothing visceral to hold our attention and
     make our will to punish the culprits remain focused.

Thank you for putting it into words.   The necessity to
suspend the flash-bang allows the rage to subside.  The
war against terrorism requires as much national will
as WWII, yet it has to be sustained with far less military
action.  Having sterile crime scenes instead of
sites of mass death inhibits the chance of victory.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Am I detecting an excess 'blockquote' here?

It's John Robinson's new format.

[CedarDave]

Likely government censorship of "official" pictures of the crash site is all the more reason to have pictures like this available. Someone with a web site should save these if Uncle Sam decides to pull the plug on these.

Ground Zero Photos

(BTW -- pics are from an earlier thread and show only destruction, no bodies or anything gruesome. They do, however, take a while to load. Freeper thread: PICS from Ground Zero )

[SES1066]

I see your point but for me the 'mere' pictures of the planes impacting and the subsequent collapse of the towers is sufficient. Nobody can see these pictures and not KNOW that there had to be enourmous casualties. To say that we need to see the wound and stiches, what do the pictures of people launching themselves out of the windows and the 16 day smoking crater at the WTC site mean? Additionally, from everything that I have heard, the size and intensity of the fire has made many of the victims part of the ash cloud with no bodies left to be gathered.

I fully agree with you that memories dim with time and that it is Extremely Hard to comprehend such Evil, but I say to you that this is no ordinary event. The shock of this is very properly compared to Pearl Harbor and JFK's Assassination, it is a Time-Shift event, where nothing is the same afterwards. I for one, as someone who loves planes and flying, will NEVER be able to forget the sight of a beautiful airplane being deliberately flown into the Tower 2.

Following this, I have no need to see each and every body bag. The police will have the coroner pictures and the DNA evidence for the trial and historians. I think you give too much credit to the 'revisionists' and their future successors. This is and will remain a fact and truth for the ages. That there will be disbelievers is also a fact but their versions will not be credible, body sacks or no body sacks.

P.S.: It looks like all posts are now automatically 'blockquoted'. I think that I like it.

[ChemistCat]

You know what they're going to do to us? They're not showing us the bodies of our side's victims. They're not showing us the grief, the funeral scenes, the widow's wailing. We think this is what we want. But they aren't going to spare us when it comes to the other side. They will sap our will by showing us the babies who might die from an errant US missile. They'll show us wild, anti-American rallies that are Arab funerals, just as they show us these when it's Israel that kills Palestinians. They will undermine our resolve and make US feel guilty for beating up on poor defenseless people. Once again the liberals are trying to make us the bad guys, and this is the first step--disconnect us from the very good reason we have to avenge our dead. Disconnect us, as much as possible, from the dead, and make this look like nothing more emotional than a planned demolition. You know the American attention span doesn't extend beyond a 5 part miniseries.

Forget it. I see already, we've lost the war. We might as well pull our ships back as let the censors erase the act that started it all.

[irish guard]

I believe your assumption that we need to see "our side's" bodies and body parts in order to stir the emotions of Americans to keep our nerve/will to fight is just wrong.

We all know what is in that rubble. People that work near the site smell the rotting flesh every day they walk past. These people are not firemen or demolition workers, they work at the NYSE, Standard & Poor's and hundreds of other businesses down there. They ride the ferry from Hoboken and each day have to look at the rubble on their way in to work.........hundreds of thousands of them.........each day they see this sight.

I live in Wisconsin and I speak with them and carry their resolve. I don't need to see pictures of the desperate people jumping off the WTC buildings before they collapsed, although I have.....I don't need to see the body parts to believe there are more than 4,000 dead people in that pile.

I understand your point, but I just don't need to see it to still feel the need to carry out justice. And I certainly don't think this is a liberal plot to ease us into some passive state.

[In mourning for six years]

My husband is a crime scene investigator from one of the surrounding counties--he said for the first ten minutes of his being there all he could do was stare. The enormity is almost too much to take in. He thought that over the past 30 years he had seen it all, but nothing prepared him for this sight!

[fsh1138]

excellent analysis !

[ChemistCat]

I hope you're right. I may be excessively pessimistic tonight. But you watch--the liberal media will be happy to show us bodies when we caused them.

[ChemistCat]

When General Eisenhower first saw concentration camp victims and the ovens and everything, he got so mad he made the Nazi POWs and the local citizens take tours. I watched old film in my REBIRTH OF ISRAEL history class just last night of reluctant citizens being forced to walk past the ovens. Look at California. You have teachers burning the American flag in front of elementary school students and the open rejection of this event's significance grows stronger every day. Look at Salon.com. Already they are returning to the mode of blaming US for what happened to US. I wish we could give New Yorkers a break and put every California liberal we could get in charge of digging through rubble for awhile. I don't need to smell the smell to believe it. But apparently a lot of people are more than ready to get back to liberal business as usual.

[ELS]

Thanks for the links. Those are some powerful pictures.