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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: 4, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday February 07 2015, @02:02AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday February 07 2015, @02:02AM (#142103) Journal

    Why did they publish?

    Its a "leadership" technique. FEAR.

    How many of us choose to follow something we don't agree with because we are afraid to do otherwise?

    I did not realize myself the importance of the fear component until our little company got "managementized" and our "leaders" started practicing "leadership skills".

    Prior to that, we did what we did because it was what each of us had an internal drive to do.

    When our behaviour became forced and externally directed, I - for one - lost that drive. The name they had for it was "burnout"

    I did not burn out - I still do my design stuff - its just I know now I cannot do creative work under the watchful eye and stopwatches of micromanagement. Best do that overseas where people can still do stuff without American business-school graduates throwing monkey wrenches into the works.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @11:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @11:24AM (#142201)

    How many of us choose to follow something we don't agree with because we are afraid to do otherwise?

    Yes I'm married, thanks for reminding me...

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tathra on Saturday February 07 2015, @06:18PM

    by tathra (3367) on Saturday February 07 2015, @06:18PM (#142251)

    Its a "leadership" technique. FEAR.

    it is a leadership technique, but its a terrible one that comes at high costs, makes your group disfunctional, and eventually self-destructs.

    the cost of [businesses] leading by fear [insideindianabusiness.com]
    4 drawbacks of fear-based leadership [asmithblog.com]

    a far better technique is to lead by example and keep morale high such that your subordinates will willingly die for you, instead of having to threaten to kill or fire them if they don't do something.

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:43AM

      by anubi (2828) on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:43AM (#142943) Journal

      Thanks for the links, tathra!

      Those links sure confirm what I experienced personally. I found the management techniques used on me extremely destructive on all levels. For all practical purposes, it destroyed me as well as the little company I used to work for, however a very select group of people made out like a bandit - then used the gains to make themselves look even more important as they went on to wreak destruction in any other company that would take them in. You could hire four damn good engineers for the cost of one of those high-falutin' hand-shaking suit-guys, and all that suit-guy would do is get rid of anyone he saw a threat - starting with the people who knew anything he didn't.

      That last link you gave seemed like the movie of what happened to me. It went down exactly as reported. Especially the loss of faith being assigned to work for some young kid who had "leadership", but no technical skills; as I had always worked with people who based decisions on technical criteria, not politics. I could communicate if we discuss technical merits and tradeoffs, but it seemed damn near impossible for me to "fit in" with the "team player" crowd who seemed to spend more time in recreation than in getting anything done. The problem with me is my work *is* my recreation!

      Some of us went to College to learn something, and some went there to make business contacts. I am one of the former and quite a loner as few understand just what it is I do. Easy pickin's for a suit-guy to lay off. Why would someone want to mess with the complexities of lead-lag compensation of phase-locked loops when he could be shaking the hand of a suit-guy with a power tie?

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]