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Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose?
HughPickens.com writes: 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. Fox warned 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."
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."
And that's pretty much it in a nutshell right there.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims. That's what the old white evangelical Christian Fox viewers want to see. That is there World view and it comforts them with their beliefs and at the same time, it scares them.
Really, this whole ISIS thing is way overblown but it has taken over Washington as THE issue. ISIS was never a real threat to the US of A. The Arabs, Persians, Kurds and every other people in the Middle East has been dealing with shit like this for thousands of years. We know nothing.
Never the less, the Old white people watching Fox cheer on their Republican representatives when they bring up a war in the Middle East.
The evangelicals have finally got the Crusades II that they always wanted.
As a result, they have doomed the USA to perpetual war, terrorism and financial ruin. It has always happened that way in history.
But all of this could have been avoided if the US kept their fat asses out of the Middle East to begin with but we had to have our cheap oil.
Of course the propaganda says we're fighting for justice and religious freedom or some such non-sense, but that is how you get people to send their sons and daughters over to die.
There you are, unabashed apologist #1. The allies bombed civilian targets, indiscriminately. Regardless of how evil the other side is, this is a war crime. In the case of Tokyo, 200,000 times larger than the crime of the ISIS people who set 1 person on fire. In the case of Dresden, 50,000 times. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the total is also about 200,000. Yet, you try to justify it, although it is unjustifiable in principle.
You're the same as them, have you been a 'towelhead', you would have cheered for ISIS.
Have a look at Obama's press conferences in the last month or so, up until this latest video. He consistently made two main points:
1. During the crusades, some Christians did violent things, so the Islamic State doesn't have anything to do with Islam. (?!?!?)
2. Intolerance, like Ferguson and ISIS, is bad.
Basically, he tried to imply that these terrorists raping kids are pretty much the same as your local PD, and that the proper response is more tolerance. He said "intolerance" a lot, rarely if ever "terrorism" or "radical Islam".
After the latest video, that position which the president tried to advance rings rather hollow, and indeed cowardly.