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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."
No.
Corporate restrictions apply.
To me, Fox got it right this time. They put the video up, with big graphic disclaimers of how barbaric it is. Nobody was ever forced to click on it, you don't have to watch it if you don't want to. Even more so, it seems rather unlikely that anyone who was considering aligning themselves with ISIS would go to Fox for information and become persuaded to join ISIS after watching this video there. ISIS is certainly tech-savvy enough to be able to distribute this through other channels to get to the people they want to get it in front of.
That said, Fox posted this likely for no reason other than to draw eyes - and with them, hopefully money - to their website. So much like Ron Paul, Fox News is most often wrong but on rare occasions right for the wrong reasons.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...that if a right-leaning group committed "atrocities" anywhere (perceived or otherwise), MSNBC, Salon, Mother Jones and their ilk would have it on front page infinite loop 24 x7. Our society needs to quit playing partisan games and starting calling out evil, regardless of who the perpetrators are.
Even better. Faux "News" claimed it was to educate the viewer about ISI(L/S), but did not put a translation of the 20ish minutes of ranting before the murder.
i wonder what the public opinion would be if the true "horrors of war" were shown on TV?
You know, soldiers massacrating people (which is what war is, literally).
Would they still call them "boys" as in "bring our boys back home"? Will they be received as heroes?
No matter how vile and criminal the content it still has the right to be seen.
Showing these murders serves as a gut punch to the free world. It enables us to have a visceral reaction to this brutality, forcing us to acknowledge and deal with the fact that there are people in this world who are willing to use any means to achieve their end attempt to force their beliefs on others through fear and control them through the same. Unfortunately, I don't think enough it makes the evening news or online news feeds. Like the press coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, somehow the modern press has developed its own misguided ethos over what the American public should or shouldn't see. Should there be a sufficient warning so that children or those who don't want to see it can choose not to? Yes. But, that's all that's needed. Fair warning.
Ultimately, it's not the press's responsibility to censor violent video. It's their responsibility to show it. It's their responsibility to objectively report the news.
There are those who will argue that Fox was doing ISIS's PR work for them. That's bunk. Has not showing the carnage that Boko Haram has inflicted on the people of Nigeria stopped them for doing it? In fact, when terrorists killed a handful of people in Paris, it was plastered all over the news for weeks. We all saw the wounded police officer shot in the head. Yet, long before that, tens of thousands of people were murdered, entire towns leveled and atrocities beyond even that were committed by Boko Haram -- yet that has received and still receives a tiny portion of the news coverage that the Paris attacks had. That's the greatest disservice of all by the press.
I think that all videos and events should be presented without editing or commentary.
I would prefer to mike my mind up instead of having others decide "what I need to know" .
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Maybe if we don't look at it we can pretend it doesn't exist, right?
I commend Fox on this. As a consumer of news I want the CHOICE of whether I view this or not. I do not want the news provider to choose for me. As a point of fact, I have up to this point chosen not to view the video.
I am actually not upset a Fox for this, I am upset that the New York Times are such cowards that they won't show Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
Just don't censor it. If somebody wants to put it up, let them. It is nobody else's business. Censorship is always the worst option.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I don't know if there is journalistic purpose in this. I only know what I feel about it. I've not watched it (or there other videos) and have no desire to.
I've seen people dying and badly injured before in real life as well as video. I'm not very squeamish about it, but it's unpleasant.
ISIS desperately wanted people to see this and have it burned into their memory. I have no desire to help them get something they want. The couple of stills I saw from it simply confirmed my opinion of them.
Beyond that, I have neither time nor memory neurons for either them or their "snuff" videos.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
This is exactly it.
No one could bring themselves to believe the horrors that the Nazi's did UNTIL the pictures could be seen.
These things are hard to look at, but they must be seen.
Lessons learned from Vietnam.
Does hiding news from people serve a legitimate journalistic purpose?
Far from helping ISIS's message, it hurts them in most of the world. Never mind how angry it had made various Middle Easter nations (Jordan the most of course) it is the kind of thing that'll hurt their recruitment with western youths. It's much harder to glorify them as valiant freedom fighters when you see shit like this. When the killing is impersonal it is easier to write it off as just "war against the infidels" or whatever. When you see cruelty up close, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to ignore.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
I have no idea on where this quote came from, but to paraphrase, "Good journalism is presenting news that people don't want to hear".
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
There is even less reason to censor it. People really need to see what war looks like.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The concentration camps weren't designed to terrorize an enemy, and the allies waited until the war was over. Two major differences between that case and this.
In this case Fox is literally doing exactly what an extremist terrorist-etc group wants them to do.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Watching videos of the 2nd 911 plane crash into the WTC
over and over and over,
slow motion, up close
seems to have reduced people's capacity for critical thinking to this day.
Suddenly the most paranoid person in any given room was considered a national security expert.
These videos seem to perform the same way.
I refuse to watch them for the same reason I refuse to watch snuff films.
But I know people who watch them with ghoulish fascination.
I think people in general are getting pretty sick of having islamic terrorists do horrific stuff and then the first thing the media does is point its finger at us saying "and don't you retaliate about this". In fact we don't, as individual citizens retaliate about this at all. There may be some instances here or there of poor treatment of muslims from some people, but they're constantly berating ALL of us to "not judge".
I think people are through with that, sick of being scolded for things we're not doing, while our leaders are developing habits of NEVER calling out these murderous islamic terrorists and stating that they are completely unacceptable in our world. They are only yelling at us to not ever respond in any way.
I wouldn't watch this video, and I suspect the motives for Fox News here is not pure. But ultimately this is a personal moment for the man who is suddenly faced with a horrific death. These are the last moments of his life, and I believe they should belong to him. Since I didn't watch it, I don't know what it contains, but I would suspect they do not show the man at his best. If we could know his wish in the matter, I'd want to defer to that. But since we can't I'd defer to the less morally ambiguous choice which is to keep the moment as private to him as is possible.
Peace, or Not?
Actually, if concentration camp photos were leaked during the war, maybe the Allies would have done more to liberate them quicker or disrupt them so that they couldn't kill as many people.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to agree with Fox and think that ISIS wants these videos shown so that people will fear them. I also worry that showing these videos will add fuel to the "all Muslims are evil terrorists" fire. Still, showing the video (in an opt-in capacity) could have some positive results. (Rallying people against ISIS even if they might have sympathized with the group previously.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The terrorists want as many people as possible to live in a non-specific paralysing fear where you are afraid to provoke the enemy rather than having a desire to take the fight to them. Self-censorship only serves their cause. The west needs to see them for the monsters that they are and admit which religion/ideology drives them. They are simply following the example of their prophet because he did similar things. If you call them non-Islamic then by extension you are calling Muhammad non-Islamic as well which is ridiculous. What the terrorists do not want is the public in the western nations getting angry and calling for a coalition to defeat ISIS like the allies defeated Nazism and fascism in WWII.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
True on both counts, but Fox "News" aired/posted a snuff film - (isn't that illegal?). In their defense, though, it's was probably more to make Obama look bad - for not bombing them further back into the Stone Age - than making Muslims or, more specifically, ISIS look bad.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
So what? When you hear 'collateral damage' from an airstrike, it is equally likely that a family somewhere was trapped under the rubble of their house and burned alive. And nobody gets mad about it.
One of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing was being interviewed. She insisted to reporters that the name of the bomber that was still alive, Tsarnev, not be used during the interview (PTSD is the presumed reason).
I recall that because I feel I have to reiterate my answer on that here.
Whether you feel some sort of trigger from that sort of thing or not, if the information is available, it must absolutely be part of the discourse on the subject. Yes, it is rather an ugly part of history, one that, I think, most people would like to forget just as soon as they hear about it. But, despite your comfort level, that piece of information is part of history, and it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that it should be omitted from discourse on the subject.
If you don't want to see it, hear it, or think about it, that's fine. But it still happened. And suggesting its availability doesn't have a "purpose" gives the false impression that it isn't significant. Unpleasantness should not immediately be grounds for censorship.
As an added thought for this particular situation: what I fear is the beating of a war drum to a threat that I haven't been exposed to. If I am not allowed to judge for myself what brutality has happened, I fear being lulled into a false sense of having to trust politicians and journalists who inject their own biases into situations and off the cliff into skirmishes that I might have a different perspective on if given all available evidence of the subject.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
And the flipside to that, particularly where ISIS is concerned, is that horrific acts like the burning of the Jordanian fighter pilot to death, easily available online or via the nightly news, might actually serve to inflame the anger of the public in many countries, serving the purpose of creating more support for the anti-ISIS campaign. That certainly seems to be what has happened in Jordan, where ISIS's actions has probably eliminated any desire on the part of the Jordanian government or its citizens to seek some sort of diplomatic compromise.
To me, al Qaeda, ISIS and the other Islamist extremists are like a hyper-virulent virus. They leave behind a horrible trail of death and misery, but they are so awful and so destructive that they essentially burn themselves out. Even Muslims who might in some ways be sympathetic to the extremists' variant of Islam will likely walk away from them because of these kinds of insanely over-the-top displays of cruelty. ISIS shouldn't be worried about shocking and pissing off Westerners, it should be worried about shocking and pissing off their co-religionists.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hope that we learn from this that there are extremists everywhere, from lunatic "barbaric Muslims", to "[bloodthirsty] evangelical Christians". I also hope we look around and notice a large number of muslims and evangelical christians who are not crazy or extreme and simply want to live their lives like everyone else. Even down here in crazy right wing Texas, right on my street there are Hindu's, Muslims, Christians of all flavors, athiests, blacks, whites, and even a gay couple. We aren't killing each other, our kids aren't warring down at the elementary school.
Clearly then, what it takes to put a man in a cage, set him on fire, and burn him to death is not a property of his religion. That man is out of his mind.
Because Germany and Japan were just victims.
Total war is an awful fucking thing, which is why we should avoid it. But if you are going to attack major military powers in the age of air power, then you will be bombed, and tens of thousands of your citizens will die, often horribly.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The "rules of war" can only work when the belligerents recognize that they exist. A number of the people executed at the war crimes trials after WWII were tried, convicted and sentenced because of their treatment of prisoners of war.
Not that the Allies were perfect, but in the case of the more egregious acts against POWs by Japan and Germany, often the orders came from pretty high up, so it wasn't just the odd unit going a little nuts.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You know, soldiers massacrating people (which is what war is, literally).
In military terms the word massacre has a specific meaning which is narrower than the sense you're using it in. The dictionary version is "an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people", however the military version of the word involves a disparity of force. For example, using a machine gun to mow down unarmed POWs would be a massacre (not to mention a war crime), while using a machine gun to kill armed soldiers attacking your position would not. Killing all inhabitants of a besieged city would be a massacre, inflicting heavy casualties on the soldiers guarding a city prior to it's capture would not.
I think the apologists for the terrorists and Islamic extremists should definitely watch all the burnings, stonings, beheadings, and rapes. Apparently words aren't enough.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'd say, at the very least, ISIS represents an economic threat to the United States, and the United States has dealt with economic threats via military power, even where there was no direct territorial threat, almost back to its beginnings. The US waged the Barbary Wars against North African pirates because the tribute the Barbary Pirates demanded was a threat to US economic interests.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
We like to think that we're free from US Government media propaganda. But vilifying your enemy-du-jour by focusing on tragic, heinous actions is pretty much the only way to drag a democracy into war.
Bonus points for actually providing the enemy with weapons in the first place:
http://scgnews.com/the-covert-...
This kind of thing has been going on for a long time... you know those WMDs we were so sure Iraq had? We knew they had them because we sold them to Iraq back when we were supporting Iraq vs. Soviet-backed Iran. It's just a fringe benefit to be able to turn your former "allies" into "enemies" a bit later by showing everyone all the bad stuff they did with your weapons.
Not judging, but it's interesting to see how the defense-industrial complex works.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
What's the big deal with burning somebody alive? Look what the US Army did to Dilawar in Afghanistan.
They suspended him from the ceiling by the wrists for 4 days until his hands were crippled, and kicked him on the knees until his feet were crippled too and he died of the complications.
The lead interrogator responsible, Glendale Walls, served 2 months in military prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ask yourself this... How effective would such videos be if nobody saw them? If people didn't know they existed. Would they keep making them?
ISIS is slaughtering thousands of people not on video also. Burning them alive, crucifying them, stoning homosexuals to death, holding women as sex slaves...
The list goes on and on and on. Plainly without the video they would still do these things, in fact if anything the video makes them more "civil" to some degree as they try to provide external justification for the actions they take - internal murders, not so much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not apologizing for anything. That is the nature of total war.
And you know what, I'm glad we won. I won't apologize for it. That you don't like the bombing campaigns is irrelevant to me.
The Carthaginians picked a fight with the Romans, and in the end, Carthage was knocked to the ground and its fields salted.
The lesson of Carthage, Dresden and Hiroshima is that you don't take on the pre-eminent military power of your day and then expect that you can be protected by rules of engagement you didn't even bother following when you thought you had the upper hand.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not a fan of Fox news but in this case I think suppression of the video helps ISIS more than showing it. Suppression allows us to ignore the fact that they're a group with behaviors that don't belong in the civilized world, similar to the Nazis. Showing the video is distasteful, but if done on a opt-in basis it allows interested viewers to see their barbarity and develop an appropriate level of anger. Sure, some extremists may become motivated by what they see as strong action but the net effect will be negative as the broader population will be repulsed. You can see this playing out in Jordan right now.
Things admittedly get rather slippery when comparing war crimes - but personally I would rank the execution of an enemy soldier, even a horrific execution for propaganda purposes, on a somewhat different scale than the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
War has rules.
The only rule to war is to win. Rules of war are there because we have to live with ourselves and our opponent after the war.
Better to think of the conquered/conquerer as gentlemen than a savage. Savagery begets savagery.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
That's true, but during the Afghanistan war Robert Fisk published hundreds of photos of Afghani civilians who were killed by American attacks, which the BBC, British press, and American press wouldn't print.
News media get much more news than they have room for, so they have to be selective.
I wonder if Fox News ran similar photos of the civilian victims of civilian victims of the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Gaza?
There is still a big difference. Nazis didn't take pictures of concentration camps to generate sympathy for their cause. They deliberately hid the evidence because it would hurt their cause if known to the world. ISIS is intentionally staging these executions, recording it, and sending it to the media to get attention. Fox News just gave them attention. Do you think they might do something even more horrific next to make sure it gets on the news? This video shouldn't have been released because it tells terrorists that to get their message broadcast to the world, all they have to do is commit atrocities.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Searched for the link again, found it this time ... ... ...
The last time I had that sort of a chill run down my spine was in that one short shot in "The Ring" - were you see the girls face. ... That was a *long* time ago. No, I don't watch horror movies.
Summary of the videoclip: ... Very well funded indeed. Or they all "dressed up for the occasion". Probably a bit of both.
The pilot is chaged in a well built cage, as if on display for this exact purpose. It's smack in the center of a court among combat ruins. Roughly 10-20 soldiers standing around in a Mad Max aestetic setting, some further up on open floors of what looks like a half-bombed building. With very clean and neat combat gear, resembling a solid desert-spotty-camo US armed forces ripp-off.
You hear the cheasy allah sing-sang whawha pop chanting we've heard so much of lately build up as the clips soundtrack and see composited videosnippets and "news-bulletin" effects flying about. ... Don't know if that was Fox or not ... wouldn't be suprised if it was the video makers though, because:
What instantly strikes the viewer - me and anybody else I bet - is that the video is *very* well made. No shaky-cam stuff, but what appears to be corrected and composited top-quality HD footage, perhaps even 2 or 4HD. Cut together in a sort of MTV-videoclip aestetic, with extra room for the camera man to move about. A cut-up of closeups putting the victim front-and-center, to allow the viewer to get close to im and build a relation ... very smart. Think "Britains go talent" style personal engagement. The whole video is a barrage of quotes on western news/reality TV and action movie style quotes. ... These guys have done their homework and their message is for us, no two ways about it.
He's wearing clothing that pretty much resembles the orange/red clothes we see on all those Guantanamo pictures. Mmmmh, could this be a little "wave with the telegraph mast" as we say in Germany? ... I wonder. Anyway, the clothes are wet, obviously from the inflamable liquid they sprayed on him. He's pretty calm, standing in the center of the cage. Note: We're still seeing all this in a montage of shots in MTV/reality TV aestetic.
They show a shot of him praying, then a fighter in desert ski-mask (all of them have one) lighting a wooden torch and holding it to a stip of flammble. Bad guy action movie style it very much is. Intended, I bet ... After a few moments the man starts burning, waving his arms in pain, then flailing and running to and fro in the cage bumping into the bars, completely engulfed in flames. He goes down and unconscious after about 10-20 seconds. Couldn't really say exactly, it seemed like an eternity, and I sure as hell have no intention watching that again.
They give it another 10-20 seconds with a close-up to his face/head crisping in the fire - he's not feeling it anymore.
We do the same thing with dead animals on the barbeque, so if you think me putting it that way is cruel, think about your eating habbits.
They stop the fire and bury him with a wheel-loader dumping a load of debris and dirt onto the cage, crushing it, extinguishing the fire and burrying him all at once. The wheel loader is filmed with what looks like a seperate cam, shots change throughout the action. The whole procedure from start to finish looks very well rehearsed
Conclusion:
This stuff has happened throughout history. We know it.
What's new is that anybody - that includes the scariest of religious fanatics - can take a high end cam for a few bucks from a convenience store and make this sort of video of it.
My judgment is out:
These guys are serious. Not Nazi Germany serious - praise the heavens not - but like 14th century serious. Curely, fanatic and not to be reasoned with. A few more of these videos and I'd vote for two dozen
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
But religious fundementalism is a right wing thing!
Oh whatever shall we do?
A clue: quit with the bullshit partisan flag waving, and accept that the terms "right wing" and "left wing" aare nearly meaningless.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
> A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation.
So no, they didn't post a snuff film.
You think there were special effects use? or that Fox is not in the entertainment industry or in any industry to make money at all?
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
It wasn't just Fox. Staid button-down CBC, not noted for sensationalism, also made the decision to air the video during the evening broadcast. And no, just describing it is not adequate to convey what happened.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You can argue somewhat over wars of defense fought on your home territory, but generally speaking war is fought for money and power, morality is just the flag the soldiers and populous are rallied behind. Certainly the US hasn't fought a "moral" war in, what, almost a century? You could argue we were drawn into WWI for moral reasons, but the atrocious, unsustainable wealth and power grabs made after the Allies won - that all but guaranteed the outbreak of WWII - quickly put a lie to that propaganda. Not to mention the fact that the unrest in the Middle East can mostly be laid at our feet as well - carving up the conquered territories with no respect for long-standing historical tensions, installing puppet governments loyal to the various Ally powers, and placing a bunch of Jews in the middle of a region rife with mutual animosity. It's like intentionally creating a powder keg in the middle of a spark factory, and for what? To make it easy for ourselves and our allies to exploit the mineral wealth of the conquered nations, while establishing a well armed military outpost right in the heart of it, that would by necessity be permanently allied with us for it's continued survival.
If morality was the goal we'd have been invading Africa to exterminate the genocidal monsters gathering power there, instead we went and conquered a bunch of our own puppet governments in the Middle East, who were getting uppity and refusing to keep the oil flowing on the terms we unilaterally "agreed" to.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"I guess those 12 million people killed..."
Wasn't it 6 million last year?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Does it serve a journalistic purpose?
No. A textual description is all that's needed to convey what happened.
Does it serve a persuasive purpose?
Yes. It's a visceral and concrete illustration of the ruthlesness of $THING. (Where $THING can be substituted with whatever religion, racial group, ideology, or institution that serves your persuasive purpose. For Fox's audience, THING="Islam"; for an atheist it's THING="religion"; for a Shia muslim maybe it's THING="Sunnis".)
Should Fox be censored or penalized by the government?
Hell on. Fortunately, nobody's making this argument. Yay first amendment!
Did Fox help ISIS by publishing the video?
Counterterrorist Malcom Nance (the "Waterboarding is torture, period." guy) thinks so, but I'm not seeing a description of why. Perhaps it's a combination of morale boost and being able to exert fear-control over their own territory. Perhaps (as another slashdotter speculated) they want to provoke the West into military intervention in order to further galvanize the Islamic world against Western influence. On the other hand, gratuitous violence is generally a great way to undermine your own cause; it's hard to imagine the video winning them any friends.These are boy-apes, demonstrating dominance and waving their guns at the cosmos, thinking that they somehow matter.
Should Fox have self-censored themselves for the sake of civic duty?
Ah: that seems to be what the debate's really about, isn't it? Those who think Fox abandoned their civic duty long ago will be tempted to "yes". Those who think of Fox as "too liberal" will say "no". Those of us with a good selection of defense industry stocks in our portfolio will also say "no", while trying to stifle a sudden case of the giggles.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
> A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation.
So no, they didn't post a snuff film.
As far as we know, neither has anyone else. Like many other things that generate outrage, "Snuff films" don't actually exist. As far as we know, no film that fits your definition has ever been made. Some murderers have filmed their acts, but the film was not the reason for the killing, and profit was not the motivation.
Great, so lets start seeing footage of the broken bodies of women and children we regularly kill in our raids.
So long as we only show the atrocities committed by the enemy it's not news, it's propaganda.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Its one thing when a news organization decides not to show a video for editorial reasons -- its quite another when you go to the Internet and virtually all of the sources that come up with the major search engines have an edited-down version of the original video -- some of these edited-down versions include the title "FULL VIDEO" and show only the most horrific finale where the pilot is being turned into a crispy critter.
I took a look at the original by downloading its torrent (they haven't gotten around to suppressing that yet the way Hollywood suppresses downloading of their movies via torrents). The things that seem to be actually suppressed on the internet (as well as news organizations) are not the horrific scenes of the pilot burning, but rather 1) the horrific scenes of children/infants mutilated by the bombings, 2) the "testimony" of the doomed pilot describing the details of the bombing operation, and 3) the list of pilots, upon each of which ISIS has placed a 100 dinar bounty.
Seastead this.
It serves no journalistic purpose. "legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video" very broadly misses the point. They don't need to show it any more than they need to show Mexican gang executions. It's lazy sensationalism meant to draw as many eyeballs as possible.
And what is the prevailing view of the drug war in Mexico? Most Americans are far away detached, aside from a few border towns whose sheriff gets shot. Maybe if the news did show the Mexican drug cartels who behead entire towns we would do something to help. http://america.aljazeera.com/o...
The Journalistic purpose is the same reason why there were so many pictures taken of the concentration camps when the allies liberated them. Lets not be ignorant of the world we live in. The news is ment to inform us.
As it stands now, Fox gave you a choice. Many people have died so that we can have a choice. Let's not denigrate their memory by obstructing the choices we have because you feel it is "lazy sensationalism".
Well, by US military standards I suppose I'd be an enemy soldier - after all I'm of fighting age and might occasionally pass radicals on the street.
And no, I don't see that draftees versus volunteers makes a big difference. We could discuss the subtleties of the distinction, but once you've decided to the take up arms (and short of neural clamps, *every* soldier makes that decision), you have become a legitimate target for the enemy. That you made your decision under duress is of no relevance to the soldiers you're trying to kill.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Seeing it on TV is probably not going to have much of an effect for the same reason that playing violent games doesn't have much of an effect. Vision is a powerful sense, but not anywhere near as powerful as the effect of hearing, smelling and feeling on top of seeing.
It's inevitable that any visual depiction is going to be different from the actual event, no matter how hard the people depicting it try to keep it accurate.
They are different, but it matters. That's why the US won't allow the media to show dead US solder's returning to the US. And that is just a picture of a coffin. A large part of the public opinion about the Vietnam war was do to the fact that the news did show the US bombing and burning villages. Footage of carnage and piles of returning body bags. The US does not allow any of that now.
And Fox News, the mouth piece of the Republican party, is glad to show you the gruesome truth of ISIS, but supports "our troops" and would never fight to show us the reality of our "liberation" of Iraq, or the children and families killed by constant drone attacks in Pakistan. I'm not even arguing against the drone attacks, I'm just saying that images matter and that's why we aren't allowed to see them when they reflect poorly on the US.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
The lesson of Carthage, Dresden and Hiroshima is that you don't take on the pre-eminent military power of your day and then expect that you can be protected by rules of engagement you didn't even bother following when you thought you had the upper hand.
Not to be pedantic. Well, OK, a little pedantic, but Germany never attacked us and when Japan attacked us we were not the pre-eminent military power of the day. Germany was. They expected us to role over and stop sending supplies to their enemies. And they had reason to think that we might do that.
To be clear, I am not arguing against the US joining WWII, nor in taking the fight to the Germans. That was the right call. Just pointing out that in 1941 the US was not a major military power and had a history of isolationism.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
You are right that the deliberateness of the act can definitely be contrasted to the indifference in the American counterpart, which would be firing missiles into houses full of people to kill a single guy, watching from a remotely piloted armed surveillance platform as they burned, with not a single picture of the charred bodies of children appearing on American media sources.
These people are fucking savages, but I don't believe our top brass in the defense-intelligence structure are any better. We're just a little more worried about being re-elected.
Fox News never showed the 60,000+ Iraqis we incinerated, shot, and crushed to death. Nor the burnt and mangled children and adults who survived our attacks. Or the prison camps, mostly holding people who we felt like might be a problem - and who are probably still in the camps. If you wanted to cover such things, you could go to hell, as far as the military was concerned. People died finding truth while Fox's old draft avoiding men and MILFy women pseudonewspeople in tight skirts sat in air-conditioned studios and made. Shit. Up.
The estimates of the number of Jews killed typically range in the millions, with six million being the most frequently cited number. However, there were other "undesirables" mass-murdered, as well. I just presumed he must have included them in the 12 million figure.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
OMG. Someone dying in a war is not murder- especially in a war that we didn't start. Words have meanings for a reason.
This, a thousand times over.