Dude, there is a general policy of the American press to not show people being KILLED versus simply fucked with. And I don't care to argue the level of abuse. It was abuse. It was not right under international law. But it was not mutilation nor murder.

Decius wrote:
] ] It's time to put up or shut up. Last week I wrote a column
] ] saying that CBS should have thought twice before showing
] ] the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. The response from
] ] readers and even some journalists was like I'd proposed
] ] banning the printing press. Numerous e-mailers said I'm
] ] no different than a Holocaust-denier who'd ban photos
] ] from Auschwitz.
] ]
] ] Well, now we have the horrible news that Nick Berg, an
] ] American contractor, was beheaded by an
] ] al-Qaeda-affiliated group explicitly in response to the
] ] release of the Abu Ghraib photos.
]
] There has been an ongoing discussion on MemeStreams for over a
] year about the ethics of publishing raw war footage. Here is
] an right wing view. I think it sheds some light on the
] subject. Be sure to follow the link through to the column he
] references and read it as well.
]
] Despite rambling off into crypto racist commentary about the
] literacy rate in Iraq, this article does make a valid
] observation. Why do we show pictures of prison abuses but we
] don't show the beheading video? Because the press uses its
] position to exhert greater pressure on those in power to be
] responsible then it does on those who are already assumed to
] be monsters. In general, there is no problem there. The abuse
] photos have certainly cost us a lot of ground in Iraq, and an
] arguement can be made that they should have been supressed,
] but honestly, if our political institutions are as strong as
] we beleive they are they ought to be able to weather such
] scrutiny, and communicate effectively about how we're handling
] it with the Arab public.
]
] The issue at hand is that clearly the press does not make
] choices about what footage to air and what footage not to air
] on the basis of the nature of the footage alone. The press
] makes these decisions on a political basis. While this
] author's reference to footage of "partial birth abortions" is
] partisan and oversimplified, the general point must be
] considered. The press makes political decisions about what to
] air. In that sense they cannot be seen as objective. Once
] we've reached that conclusion we must ask what the political
] motives of the press actually are, and whether we feel like
] those motives are in line with our interests.

RE: Jonah Goldberg on Abu Ghraib on National Review Online