Should networks stop airing hostage videos?

[DeepModem Mom]

MarketWatch: How the media can help Jill Carroll
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Feb. 1, 2006


On Monday afternoon, MSNBC showed a brief, heartbreaking image: a television clip of Jill Carroll, the American freelance journalist who had been taken hostage in Iraq on Jan. 7.

The riveting shots, made available by al-Jazeera, showed the 28-year-old Carroll clad in a white head scarf. We saw the stricken, agonized expression on her face as she spoke. The footage lasted less than a minute -- not quite the time it takes to air a Coke or Pepsi commercial. Still, the pictures provided such an indelible portrait of one courageous woman's fear that it will be a long time before I can get them out of my mind.

In other words, I acted exactly the way the terrorists had intended. The clip made me feel weak and helpless. I feel this way every time someone is grabbed by militant enemies of America and dragged in front of TV cameras....

***

What if the American television networks -- out of a concern for the hostage's welfare -- didn't show the tape and thwarted the goal of the captors?

Maybe it's time we refused to air a tape and, in effect, quit pandering (if unwittingly) to the terrorists. Perhaps Americans living and working in danger zones around the world would be better off from now on....


http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B1E1A5A50-16A8-4995-8CB2-15DE019B50D1%7D&siteid=google&dist=

[mattclearing]

1. Yeah, and then we could miss out on one more harsh reality of war.

I want the war front and center and in people's faces. I think there should be live reports from the streets of Baghdad when bombs go off.

[Democrats_win]

2. Only then will people really know the truth. Iraq is a dangerous mess.

[951-Riverside]

3. Yes but thank goodness for the internet :)

[951-Riverside]

6. I don't know what I was thinking I meant to say "NO but...."

[calico1]

4. Absolutely not.

What we need is to see MORE of what is really going on. The type or good reporting that was done during Vietnam. That helped to turn the tide against the war big time. What we see now is very sterilzed compared to that. And for a reason. The people in power know that if Americans see what is really going on they will want no part of this war.

[sui generis]

5. I disagree.

Americans would be safer and better off if we didn't invade countries, murder tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians, start civil wars and holy wars, and then claim to be the ones under assault.

I think the media should show every tear, every beating and beheading, every gruesome image, including the ones WE inflict on prisoners and weddings and families just trying to get by and survive for another day.

Then it would really BE the media and not some taxpayer paid for 24/7 infomercial for der Führer and his evil minions.