iraq

Pictures and Video of the Beheading of Korean captive Kim Sun-il Posted By US Website. Koreans Hack To Shut Down The Sites: June 23, 2004

"Police assume either the Iraqi armed group distributed the tapes to the site or the site purchased them from other Muslim sites, considering the site put out an ad seeking videotapes of Kim Sun-il’s beheading since June 22. The videotapes contain a scene showing a masked man beheading Kim after declaring “Allah is great.” Netizens who saw the tapes showed strong emotional responses, saying, “It was too cruel and I couldn’t help myself from bursting out into tears. [...] Many netizens are holding a campaign not to watch the videotape at all. Opinions such as: “Please, let’s not watch the videotape even though it may be just us Koreans who don’t watch it. It is the same as allowing Kim Sun-il to be killed twice. Imagine how painful it would be if his family and friends watch it. Let’s not watch it and delete it even when it is in your hand,” have been posted on most Korean internet portal sites. Kim Ho-ki, Professor of Sociology at Yonsei University, pleaded with the government, citizens’ groups, and netizens to control unnecessary expressions of emotion and impulsive behavior, saying, “I am concerned that the videotape may provoke sentiment against Iraq and intensify the dispute on the army dispatch.”"
[Donga]
[Ogrish.com]

John O"Sullivan: "Media Off the Mark With Rumsfeld Potshots": May 18, 2004

In the last week the coverage of Iraq by the U.S. media has exhibited at least four separate failings:
1. Inferentialism. Several media reports of the Abu Ghraib scandal have been, in effect, prosecuting briefs for the theory that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld either knew about or authorized the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Since the evidence for this is scanty, reporters build inference upon inference to make the case. [...]

2. Selective agonizing. Ever since the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, the media have shown them on every possible occasion, along with reports and editorials on America's shame and the world's revulsion. [...] Then again, worse rape and brutality than that displayed in Abu Ghraib are known to occur daily in America's prisons without arousing any media interest at all. [...]

3. Taking dictation from terror. Before we leave Berg, we should note that a vast number of news outlets reported that he was murdered "in retaliation for" the Abu Ghraib abuses. That was the terrorists' own justification. They shrewdly judged that the Western media would eagerly accept it. And they were right. The "retaliation" explanation transferred the blame for Berg's death from the actual murderers onto George W. Bush and the United States. [...]

4. Willing gullibility. Two newspapers -- the Daily Mirror in Britain and the Boston Globe -- have published fake photographs of British and American soldiers abusing prisoners. In the British case the fakes were quickly detected once they had been published, and in the U.S. case, they had been detected before the Globe published them."
[Chicago Sun-Times]

Jeff Jarvis: "News Judgement Is Political": May 17, 2004

Garry Baker: "A War of Pictures": May 16, 2004

"Photographs of war have been changing public opinion for a long time. But the internet has now made a picture worth millions of words. [...] Graphic television coverage of human conflict has been commonplace since the Vietnam War, but the intervention of the internet has changed the rules. Anyone with a digital video camera and a computer can spread whatever message they choose to millions of people, few of them in a position to know the full truth. [...] "One could hope that this increase in the circulation of images of human tragedy might make us more compassionate, but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case," says Richard Devetak. "It is not going to stop wars." Like many commentators, Devetak fears the Berg video will serve mainly to raise the rage in middle America and strengthen President George Bush's support and his resolve to continue, even escalate, the war in Iraq. "It is likely to heighten our sensitivity to the plight of our own soldiers on the ground and also make the war even nastier."
[The Age]

Jay Rosen: News Judgment Old and News Judgment New: May 16, 2004

"It is a fact of life that there are political implications in everything the news media does when handling a big national story-- including the images that are shown and not shown to us. Writing in USA Today on May 11, the day the Berg video surfaced, Walter Shapiro speculated: "This atrocity is almost certain to inflame American public sentiment, and presumably will strengthen the position of those calling for an-eye-for-an-eye vengeance in Iraq." But if the atrocity--a political murder, committed in the Middle East--might inflame and strengthen, so too might news coverage of that atrocity inflame this and strengthen that, depending on how it is handled. And this is what I mean by political implications in everything the press does. Of course we need to argue about those, and it would be helpful to everyone if journalists learned to take a larger part in such debates. But part of the reason they don't, I think, is that discussion so easily slides from the political implications of news judgment to the political motivations that must, according to many critics (including many PressThink readers), lie behind those judgments. Not only are the motivations there, it is said, but they are easily divined. [...]

I think it's strange to go around telling the news media what to show and not show, based on your predictions of how other people--apparently less capable of independent judgment--will react to the news. It's strange, it's intellectually hazardous (your predictions can be wrong, and thus your conclusions too) and it risks inflantalizing your fellow citizens. [...] the political implications in what Big Media does are often under-discussed by journalists and critics alike, while the political motivations of the gatekeepers are way over-drawn. [...] Be aware that if you want gatekeepers to let pass more of the news that helps your side, and less that helps "them," then you aren't really addressing the gatekeepers at all. In fact, you have surrendered the topic of news judgment to politics and its maneuvers. You've politicized it.

Way, way underneath these debates I find a disturbing fact. Even the smartest people in the major news media--and this is especially so in television news--have not really determined for themselves or explained to us exactly what their role should be in the worldwide fight against terrorism. "Cover it responsibly and well" doesn't begin to provide an answer. For it must have occurred to people high up in the network news divisions that the videotape of the beheading was made not only for Bush but for them, in their professional capacity. That is a fact they have to live with, and think about, whether or not they show us the gruesome act. We are a long, long way from coming to grips with the fact that political violence worldwide incorporates media coverage worldwide. Terrorism can be many things, but it is always an attempt at communication; and a free press in an open society "completes" the act."
[PressThink]

Matthew Stannard: Beheading Video Seen As War Tactic: May 13, 2004

"The nightmare video of an American civilian captured in Iraq being decapitated by his captors was anything but a random act of terrorism, experts say -- it was a press release, carefully designed for a global audience. [...] It was the kind of production, the experts said, that al Qaeda and other radical groups have repeatedly used in their global war on the West: an evolving form of confrontation that American institutions -- politicians, press, public and military -- are still struggling to understand and deal with effectively. [...] most experts said they doubted Berg's videotaped death was a result only of [Abu Ghraib] abuses. Several, noting that Berg apparently had been kidnapped nearly a month ago before he was killed, suggested that the prison scandal merely provided the terrorists with an opportunity to make a point. [...] Another goal, the experts said, is recruitment -- drawing new members to the cause by portraying the killers as defenders against anti-Muslim forces. [...] In fact, the power of information is so great that military policy experts describe it as an instrument of national power, like diplomacy, economy and the military, said Douglas V. Johnson II [...] "Terrorism, as I see it, is communications," said Nacos. "Without the media communicating what they want to say, terrorism doesn't really make sense. " [...]
[San Francisco Gate]

Drudge Report Publishes Two "Good News" Pictures from Iraq: May 10, 2004

The Drudge Report posts two pictures of US soldiers surrounded by beaming Iraqi children with the following accompanying text: "Here's images you will not see in the New Yorker or on 60 minutes. American soldiers welcomed as heros in Iraq! As the world's satellites and printing presses await fresh images of troop horrors and abuse, soldiers on the ground e-mailed these snaps of warm greetings from some of Iraq's women and children." Over the next weeks these two pictures are commented on widely by pro-serviceman, pro-war sources as images the "liberal press" would not show.. "Sisu" posts this email from "A Soldier's Mom": "Could all the "bloggers" request pictures (from anyone that has them) to send those pictures to their Internet favorite web site. Surely, we are taking pictures of the good work our Americans, both civilian and military, do all over the world. Perhaps we could overwhelm the traditional media outlets with positive pictures to counteract the 24/7 bombardment of these terrible images. Maybe the world will never love us, but Americans need to be reminded that there is a great deal more to be proud of than ashamed."
[Drudge Report]