InstaPundit has a good round-up regarding media coverage of the Be~rg execution: Why The Big Media Continue To Lose Their Audience. Excerpts from the post:
From Neal Boortz:
This morning in most of the newspapers I scanned during my preparation for the show the top story was still the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. Ni~ck Be~rg had already disappeared from many front pages, but the prison abuse stories remain. May I suggest to you that there is a reason for this? Maybe it's just this simple: The prison abuse scandal can damage Bush, the Ni~ck Be~rg story can only help him. Given the choice many editors will chose the stories that serve their cause, getting Bush out of the White House, rather than one that hurts it.
From Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News:
Our letters page today is filled with nothing but Be~rg-related letters, most of them demanding that the DMN show more photos of the Be~rg execution. Not one of the 87 letters we received on the topic yesterday called for these images not to be printed. My sense is that there's a big backlash building against the media for flogging the Abu Ghraib photos, but being so delicate with the Be~rg images. People sense that there's an agenda afoot here. As somebody, can't remember who, wrote yesterday, "Why is it that the media can show over and over again pictures that could make Arabs hate Americans, but refuse to show pictures that could make Americans hate Arabs?"
From Glenn Reynolds:
These [media] guys are marginalizing themselves with their agenda-driven coverage. And they're so out of touch they don't realize it.
Michael Getler, ombudsman of The Washington Post, recently explained why it was important to publicize photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib: "The reality of war in all its aspects needs to be reported and photographed. That is the patriotic, and necessary, thing to do in a democracy." (Via Ace of Spades HQ via Gil Ronen)
Yet The Washington Post didn't publish photos of Ni~ck Be~rg's execution. Apparently they don't consider it patriotic to publicize -- much less dwell on -- our enemies' atrocities.
If you want to see the pictures big media don't want you to see, the following link contains stills from the video of Al Qaeda be~heading Ni~ck Be~rg: WARNING: Extremely graphic images.
Posted by Forkum at May 13, 2004 08:14 PM
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