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trintiy
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Feb 2001
Location: MD.......Missing England :(
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You people sit hear and argue about censorship and cry over an Arab web site that got hacked but in times of war censorship and quality control is essential. I spent 10 year in the U.S military and the last way I'd want my family to find out I died in a war is on national TV!
It's standard military policy that asks that names of POWs not be disclosed until notification is complete, a practice the major news organizations followed, along with declining to show any recognizable shots from the video until the families had been informed. But journalists didn’t follow in lockstep when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked that recognizable video and audio of POWs not be aired or published.
Instead, they exercised judgment, for the most part carefully choosing what to show and how (stills in some cases, snippets of video in others), and more important, explaining to their audiences why each particular decision was made.
Even so, anyone with unfiltered Internet access could see the pictures on Al-Jazeera, and in some cases, watch the footage in its entirety before the U.S. media even chose to show stills of unrecognizable victims. A number of sites grabbed the footage and have made it available as stills and video.
Even though it regularly reaches American viewers on the Canadian border, the CBC showed no qualms about using video that might identify POWs before notification. The footage of a flight crew taken prisoner Monday was readily available on CBC.ca’s on-demand newscast before it showed up on the U.S. channels I was watching or on major news Web sites. Again, the sensitivities are different. After all, no matter how much Americans and Canadians have in common, this isn’t their war, and it’s not their prisoners or dead. The U.S. media takes care with images of its own but readily show pictures of Iraqi dead or wounded. The CBC might not be so quick to show difficult, recognizable images of Canadian soldiers before their families are notified. Each video that comes in, each picture, each file, each sound bite calls on journalists to make decisions.
Situational ethics aren’t absolute. Some may think it unethical to withhold images like the ones in the POW video. After all, images can -- and have -- turned the tide of public emotion. Different people can look at the same video clip and come to quite different conclusions. (I know people whose determination to fight was hardened by pictures that provoked antiwar emotions in others.)
Some, like myself, find it unacceptable to distribute or publish particularly graphic images that can be seen easily by a family member or friend of the dead soldier.
___________________
"If we are to achieve greatness in life, we must live as though we were never going to die" - ?
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 Mar-28-2003 23:00 
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DrUg_Tit0
e^(i*pi)+1=0
Registered: Nov 2002
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
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| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
I'm not arguing for cencorship, I'm critisizing al jazeera's decision to show that particular footage. They could at least be a little more tasteful so you can't identify the dead. Airing what they just aired would be like me going to an earthquake disaster site and taking pictures of dead bodies, showing close ups of their injuries, getting a close up of their faces, and then coming home to post it on the web.
However, the media should NOT be allowed to air "anything" they want because we have a certain right to privacy. Even if I'm dead, that doesn't give CNN the right to open up my coffin to take pictures of me. It's disrespectful and invasive. At any rate I'm merely stating that the NYSE was likely offended in much the same way that it offended me, and thus it is THEIR RIGHT and perogative to revoke Al-Jazeera's access to the floor if they so choose to.
If you call that an attack on Al-Jazeera well then Al-Jazeera attacked us first with their tasteless journalism. Dont get me wrong, I admire and respect al-jazeera as a whole, I just don't agree with their decision to show that particular footage.
Edit: And I don't think that the government should cencor anything about the media except for upholding a citizen's right to privacy and slander laws. |
Well, personally if I am dead, I couldn't care less about what was being done to my body, but I can understand your point to a degree. But Al Jazeera is not the only network that is using such events to boost its popularity. Remember those pictures of people jumping out of the WTC? It's the same thing Al Jazeera did, but nobody complained then. Besides, BBC and CNN have shown the same injured and killed people Al Jazeera did, just that they were partially censored. So it's ok to show a dead person, as long as you don't show his fatal wounds?
Regardless of that, NYSE is not the one who should decide whether the content is appropriate or not. If there are really some indications that a station should not be allowed to have it's stocks in the NYSE because the content it is displaying is insulting or disrespectful, it is up to the courts to make a decision about it. Besides, even if that content could be generally viewed as disrespectful (although I think it wouldn't be viewed as such in most countries outside of the US), I think banning the network from the NYSE is a little harsh. Surely other TV networks which are on the NYSE have at a time done something worse, or at least equal to what Al Jazeera did.
On a side note, while I agree that people are not idiots in a sense they don't realize how many people have died, when you see marines with heads blown off, it sends you a much stronger message than to see nice little numbers on the TV screen.
___________________
1+1=10
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Mar-28-2003 23:10 
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occrider
Traveladdict
Registered: Oct 2000
Location: New York
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| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Well, personally if I am dead, I couldn't care less about what was being done to my body, but I can understand your point to a degree. But Al Jazeera is not the only network that is using such events to boost its popularity. Remember those pictures of people jumping out of the WTC? It's the same thing Al Jazeera did, but nobody complained then. Besides, BBC and CNN have shown the same injured and killed people Al Jazeera did, just that they were partially censored. So it's ok to show a dead person, as long as you don't show his fatal wounds?
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Personally I saw VERY little footage (actually none) of people jumping out of the WTC. I too find that objectionable but it's still not the same as showing footage of them dead on the ground after they hit it. Also I don't mind coverage to show that there are american dead (as long as it's done tastefully), and I don't even mind the televised images of POWs (as long as time is given to notify families and the footage doesn't show prisoners being tortured or humiliated). What I do object to is, as trinity said above, the footage of the dead such that you can easily identify them and see the wounds inflicted upon them. Like I said before, it's disrepectful to the dead and to their families.
| quote: |
On a side note, while I agree that people are not idiots in a sense they don't realize how many people have died, when you see marines with heads blown off, it sends you a much stronger message than to see nice little numbers on the TV screen. |
If you want to send a stronger message than mere numbers on the screen then show how these families are suffering and coping with their loss. Show us how human these people were and that the loss their lives were an incredible waste. DON'T show us a picture of them with gunshot wounds to the head and pictures of people with their head's blown off. That sends a strong message alright ... of how tasteless and insensitive our society has become 
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Mar-28-2003 23:45
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DaveSZ
When The Levee Breaks
Registered: Jan 2003
Location: ATX
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| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Well, personally if I am dead, I couldn't care less about what was being done to my body, but I can understand your point to a degree. But Al Jazeera is not the only network that is using such events to boost its popularity. Remember those pictures of people jumping out of the WTC? It's the same thing Al Jazeera did, but nobody complained then. Besides, BBC and CNN have shown the same injured and killed people Al Jazeera did, just that they were partially censored. So it's ok to show a dead person, as long as you don't show his fatal wounds?
Regardless of that, NYSE is not the one who should decide whether the content is appropriate or not. If there are really some indications that a station should not be allowed to have it's stocks in the NYSE because the content it is displaying is insulting or disrespectful, it is up to the courts to make a decision about it. Besides, even if that content could be generally viewed as disrespectful (although I think it wouldn't be viewed as such in most countries outside of the US), I think banning the network from the NYSE is a little harsh. Surely other TV networks which are on the NYSE have at a time done something worse, or at least equal to what Al Jazeera did.
On a side note, while I agree that people are not idiots in a sense they don't realize how many people have died, when you see marines with heads blown off, it sends you a much stronger message than to see nice little numbers on the TV screen. |
Hahahahahaha. ONce you're dead, you can't care what happens anymore...
P.S> I just watched the CBS news, and I think they do a good job of trying to remain neutral. Much more so than CNN or FoX. I don't know about the Arab news stations sice hackers keep non Arabic speaking people from seeing what they report.
___________________
http://www.discoboomer.com/forums/
Last edited by DaveSZ on Mar-29-2003 at 00:09
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Mar-29-2003 00:02 
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malek
drinks your milkshake!
Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Montréal
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Free press and the face of war
By Paul Belden
AMMAN - Suddenly, on Sunday, the war seemed a lot less like a video game than it had the day before.
At least, in the Arab world it did.
While Western television coverage continued to be dominated by a numbing rotation of embedded reporters, armchair generals and video special effects, Arab media was showing some of the most astonishing images of war ever broadcast.
An example of the Western approach: Sunday morning's coverage on CNN was anchored by an hours-long live broadcast by a camera crew embedded with a US Marine unit in southern Iraq. The unit had taken fire from a nearby building, and stopped behind a road to deal with it, the reporter explained. US forces had fired two rockets at the house, one of which had struck home.
But the reporter didn't show any of that. The only thing that the camera showed was a tank rolling slowly down another road into the picture from the right. The tank stopped. Then it backed up. "This is historic footage," the reporter intoned, his voice hushed. A convoy rolled into view behind the tank. The convoy stopped. "This is a real-time battle you're seeing."
Who knew that real-time battle could be so antiseptic, so choreographed, so clean?
Before the day was out, CNN's war coverage had been mocked and overtaken by images that showed the true face of war in all its madness and horror - images that almost invariably bore the label "Al-Jazeera exclusive". These were not scrolling maps or armchair generals - these were scenes of a 12-year-old child with half her head blown off in Basra. This was the sound and fury of the relatives of victims of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes in northern Iraq loudly promising their revenge. This was live coverage of a hundreds-strong posse of armed and delighted Iraqis setting fire to the bulrushes of the Tigris River in search of a Western pilot presumed hiding within.
This was a guided tour of a roomful of US soldiers in a morgue. This was the fear in the eyes of a captured US soldier as he was asked by an off-screen voice in broken English why he came all the way from Texas just to kill Iraqis. "I follow orders," he answered, a strain in his voice. These were images of war.
And while Western sensibilities might have been spared the trauma of exposure to these images, they went straight into the homes and hearts of 300 million viewers in the Middle East on Sunday. The effect was immediate, and strong.
At a press conference on Sunday in Amman, Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb was specifically asked to comment on "the al-Jazeera effect" produced by the images broadcast that day. "I found them painful," he answered. "Very, very painful. The people in the country are angry. We are angry." Then he went on to announce Jordan's support for a new Arab initiative aimed at ending the war through a negotiated compromise.
The "al-Jazeera effect" did not stop at the water's edge, either. Even US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced to take the images into account, calling the showing of captured American troops a possible "war crime". President George W Bush cut short his working getaway at Camp David to return to the White House on Sunday and tell reporters that "I do know that we expect them [the US prisoners of war] to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture - humanely."
Of course, the Arab media found much to mock in Bush's comments. The Bush administration's "newfound affection for the Geneva Convention is remarkable", wrote an editorial in the Riyadh-based daily Arab News. "The US does not believe that the prisoners now being held at Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Pictures of the men there, shackled and living in cages, were distributed by the Bush administration to the world's media."
Nobody could accuse al-Jazeera of taking sides in the showing of prisoners; they had earlier broadcast images of Iraqi men believed to be soldiers surrendering to British troops near Basra. Rumsfeld had not complained.
It's a big change from the 1991 Gulf War when the Middle East, along with the rest of the world, depended on the Western media for up-to-the-minute developments. Now they can choose from not only al-Jazeera, but other all-news channels, including the Abu Dhabi channel, which focuses on news in the Gulf states, and one-month-old al-Arabiya. There is also the Hezbollah-run al-Manar, based in Lebanon, which doesn't even try for objectiveness. Whereas al-Jazeera's tag line for war coverage is the neutral "War in Iraq", al-Manar's is the fiery "War of American Aggression".
Al-Jazeera's popularity rests in part in its refusal to follow any agenda, be it the official government line or the radical militant Islamism. Proof of its effect is the fact that its broadcasts have repeatedly angered Arab governments - including Jordan's, where the station had been banned from opening a bureau as recently as last week.
After the ban was lifted, the correspondent who arrived to staff the Amman bureau was the now-famous on-screen news personality Sawsan abu-Hamdeh, fresh from a two-month assignment in Baghdad. I asked her what she thought of the effect of her station's coverage of dead American soldiers. "It is only the truth," she answered. "I do not regret it [at] all. The government might not like it, but there is a difference between the government view of events and and the local view of events. We try to portray what is really happening in the world."
And the people seem to know it. In a small coffee shop in central Amman on Sunday, five old men were gathered spellbound around a small television set, watching the live coverage of the search for the supposed downed Western pilot in the Tigris River. The reporter on the scene, the well-known Palestinian Majed Abdul Hadi, had his camera constantly trained on the crowd as it searched the river with guns drawn and flaming brands in hand. Abdul Hadi provided a continuous overdub report on developments, responding to commentary and questions posed by his bureau chief in Doha, a woman named Fairrouz. This was the most newsworthy thing happening in the world at that moment. It was up to the minute, it was exciting, it was news. And al-Jazeera was prepared to cover it live as it unfolded.
Over on CNN, meanwhile, there was a reporter standing in front of the camera conveying the message that the Pentagon denied the loss of any aircraft. Now that's fair enough - but al-Jazeera also carried this denial prominently throughout its report, which was skeptical of both sides' claims. Fairrouz was constantly asking Abdul Hadi to clarify the conflicting reports she was receiving, whether anyone really had been captured or seen. It was tough and skeptical coverage.
CNN seemed to think that the Pentagon denial was the main news, but that patently wasn't the case. The search itself was the main news, as any newsman would know: the fact that a few hundred people were dead certain that they had a pilot cornered on the banks of the river. That was the news.
As of Monday morning, CNN and BBC began showing the interview with the captured American troops in Nasiriyah - but with their faces scrambled and only their voices heard. I can certainly understand their judgment. But the fear in those soldiers' eyes was the true face of war, seen up close. It was truer than the mushroom clouds seen from a distance over Baghdad. And if the true face of war is too much for American prime time television, then maybe prime time American television should stick to covering the Oscars, and leave the war alone.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC25Ak06.html
___________________
[/IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/ngycqo.png[/IMG]
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Mar-29-2003 04:24
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occrider
Traveladdict
Registered: Oct 2000
Location: New York
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Just to show that I'm not being one-sided about this issue at all I would like to take the time to condemn western media as well for their transgressions. It is simply innappropriate for the media on BOTH sides to be stooping to this level of conduct.
Exclusive: Is it Acceptable to Show Iraqi Captives?
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid
I had expected criticism of the Arab TV channels to be based on their one-sided reporting of the war to the benefit of the Iraqi government and their determinedly inflammatory content. However, what enraged Western governments and human rights and media organizations were the images of the American prisoners on our TV screens. They considered them a contravention of the Geneva Convention, which holds nations in armed conflict to certain standards in dealing with prisoners of war.
To say that this criticism is displaced is not to defend Al-Jazeera, which has received more than its share of condemnation. But it is to reject the illogical binding of some groups to rules that do not apply to others.
If the portrayal of the American prisoners on TV was illegal, why then wasn’t the same thing said when images of Iraqi prisoners and dead in Umm Qasr where shown on TV only three days earlier? A friend confided that he had spent the first few nights of the war surfing between the American news channels, CBS, CNN, ABC and Fox — all had shown images of Iraqi prisoners and victims of the American bombardment.
We saw lines of Iraqis surrendering and being searched and guarded — the faces of many of them were clearly visible. Among them was a prisoner being given water by a soldier while two other guards stood pointing guns at his head. We also saw pictures of dead Iraqis in their trenches, faces also visible — one was leaning against a white flag.
When the Geneva Convention was drawn up more than 50 years ago — in a different technological age — it dealt with two issues: One that we all agree on, namely rejecting the display of bodies of the enemy. That these should be respected is also a specific tenet in Islam. The second issue is to do with the families of the prisoners — the prisoners’ images must not be shown out of respect for their dignity and to protect their families’ feelings.
With the speed of the development of the war and the speed of the media who, embedded with the army, transmit events as they happen, it is difficult to prevent the broadcasting of prisoners’ images. This is difficult to prevent also because of the need on occasions to prove the truth of certain contradictory claims. The images of the prisoners were used to confirm the truth of a statement — this is after all a war that is being fought in the media and the minds of people as well as on the battlefield.
If the Americans fear that the images of the prisoners will cause embarrassment to their families and hurt soldiers’ feelings, the situation of the Iraqi soldiers is even more dangerous. For them it could be a question of life or death for their families if the prisoners are identified on screen. There are anti-Saddam militias that could resort to liquidating the families of those soldiers. In addition, the Iraqi regime itself punishes those who appear to be submissive or giving up, after they are set free. Therefore, the fear of the effect of TV on the Iraqi soldiers is far greater than the justification for protecting the American soldiers. If people want to prevent broadcasting of the images of the prisoners, then all soldiers should benefit from such a ruling.
Arab News Opinion 29 March 2003
I haven't seen any pictures of dead Iraqis that weren't covered with blankets but I'll take this reporters word for it. I've most certainly seen pictures of surrendering Iraqis.
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Mar-29-2003 04:51
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but fox news is the beeeeest 
