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posted by janrinok on Friday February 06 2015, @11:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the depends-which-side-you-are-on dept.

Erik Wemple writes at the Washington Post that Fox News recently took the controversial step of posting a horrific 22-minute video online that shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death warning internet users that the presentation features "extremely graphic video." "After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video," said Fox executive John Moody. "Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content."

But Fox's decision drew condemnation from some terrorism experts. "[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS's media arm," said Malcolm Nance. "They might as well start sending them royalty checks." YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site it would be taken down. CNN explained that it wouldn't surface any of the disturbing images because they were gruesome and constituted propaganda that the network didn't want to distribute. "Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video — which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause — but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing "strong, earth-shaking and decisive" retaliation."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:34AM

    by SGT CAPSLOCK (118) on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:34AM (#142060) Journal

    I don't think any form of censorship is proper. That said, I'd still argue that any video prominently displayed by most mainstream news businesses are usually posted for some specific reason/agenda/whatever.

    Not that doing that is wrong or bad. Do what they want, it doesn't affect me!

    I've been lurking around the Internet for yea on 18 years now, and I've managed pretty well to avoid videos/images/whatever that would make me gag. Seeing someone being murdered in a video would probably make me feel ill; I've never felt that it's hard to avoid seeing that type of trash though, and I've definitely never seen such a thing yet.

    Whoa, there's extra space to type here! I feel like I should have more of an opinion but I don't. ;(

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  • (Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday February 07 2015, @05:53PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Saturday February 07 2015, @05:53PM (#142248)

    Not that doing that is wrong or bad. Do what they want, it doesn't affect me!

    Are you sure? When most people get brainwashed into thinking the US should play world police, whose money are they going to want to steal in order to fund their unjust wars? Everyone's they can get their hands on.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @10:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @10:20PM (#142317)

    The War Photo No One Would Publish [theatlantic.com]

    When Kenneth Jarecke photographed an Iraqi man burned alive, he thought it would change the way Americans saw the Gulf War. But the media wouldn’t run the picture.

    [...]On February 28, 1991, [...] Jarecke took the picture just before a ceasefire officially ended Operation Desert Storm--the U.S.-led military action that drove Saddam Hussein and his troops out of Kuwait, which they had annexed and occupied the previous August. The image and its anonymous subject might have come to symbolize the Gulf War. Instead, it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices.

    If it supports USA militarism/imperialism, it gets published. Otherwise, no.

    -- gewg_