The New Proud Porn Masters of Our Major Media

The News media blows it on the Nick Berg story

Like millions of other Americans, over the past few years I have become increasing cynical about the nature of this country's news media. However, up until yesterday, I never thought that our fourth estate was actively (though I still believe, perhaps naively, unconsciously) working on behalf of our enemies.

That all changed with the disgraceful coverage (or lack thereof) of the slaughter of Nick Berg, the American civilian whose horrific murder was carried out by elements of Al Qaeda and videotaped for dissemination on a website.

When I first heard the news of how the same forces that killed 3,000 of our citizens on 9/11 had brutally butchered an innocent American on tape in Iraq as retaliation for the alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners, I was sure that this was a story that would spark universal outrage against our enemy. I fully expected this story to dominate the news cycle and the Iraqi prisoner scandal to finally be put into its proper perspective. I was not only wrong, I wasn't even close.

While the Berg story was certainly treated as the top news item (though several news websites, including those of the LA Times and CNN, did not have it as their most prominent story by the end of the day), it was treated by most outlets as just another factoid. In fact, not only was the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal coverage not diminished by the revelations of Berg's murder, but instead it seemed to actually augment it.

In a media era in which everything gets reported in some fashion, it is what gets REPEATED that has become important. While the TV networks all led with the murder of Nick Berg, they provided only extremely abbreviated "hit and run" coverage that ignored several vital elements to the story and provided almost no context or even the remotely appropriate sense of outrage. It appeared that they viewed the Berg story only through the dangerously distorted prism of how a man died a horrible death because our enemies were justifiably upset about the naked pictures they had seen of Iraqi prisoners.

ABC was the only network that even briefly touched on the concept that maybe Berg's death showed that the abuse scandal was not being seen by the media elites in its proper context, and their mention of that aspect of the story was insulting at best. After their reporter characterized (and marginalized) those who felt this way as "conservatives" on "talk radio," Peter Jennings, with the kind of condescension only he can muster, dismissed this school of thought as being politically motivated. As if the only reason an American might think that the brutal beheading of one of our civilians is worse than an American reservist mocking an Iraqi prisoner's small genitalia, was because they are a mindless supporter of President Bush!!

The most astonishing moment that I saw on TV "news" came from Paula Zahn on CNN. Zahn actually had the gall to speak on behalf of the American people when stated (without any factual foundation) that many of us must be looking at these photos and thinking that enough is enough, this isn't worth it any more and we should withdraw from Iraq. What???!!!!!

Of course, the vast majority of the American people had not seen the video in question because the TV networks made the outrageous decision to not show ANY of Berg's execution. While I realize we live in a world where everything we do and say is predicated on the concept that some child might be scarred for life if they were inadvertently exposed to it, I do not believe that there is ANY justification for this decision that treated all of us as if we are children ourselves.

I have seen the video and, while it is unquestionably horrible to look at, because of the grainy and fairly distant nature of it I strongly believe that, with proper warning, the entire clip could have and should have been shown on television. At the very least, after being bombarded with stills of naked Iraqi prisoners for over a week, the American people should have been given enough credit to able to endure still photos of Berg's severed head being shown off to the camera.

Would this have made for pleasant viewing? Obviously not. However, who ever said that democracy would always be pleasant? I fervently believe that it was an insult to Berg's sacrifice to not at least allow the American people to fully understand the evil against which we are fighting in a manner that they would not soon (if ever) forget. To not allow the majority of our citizens that option was a HUGE favor to Al Qaeda.

TV not only didn't trust you to see ANY of the relevant parts of the video, they didn't even play the chilling audio either. That was left to talk radio. What was the possible justification of that inexplicable decision? It is not as if Americans have never before been exposed to the SOUND of someone screaming in agony! Why did the TV networks seemingly go out of their way to shield the enemy from the wrath of our people? I honestly have no idea.

Not only did the news media blow it by "protecting" us from the truth, they completely ignored several other important elements of the story as well. For instance, how often was it reported that it is believed that the murder took place in Fallujah, where four other American civilians also had their murders and mutilations edited for our comfort by the media? Why did no one question whether our soft response to that event (for which Berg's murders claimed victory before they sawed his head off) might have led to the killing?

What about the simple fact that, like magic, we suddenly have Osama bin Laden offering rewards in "support" of the Iraqi people and major Al Qaeda actions taking place there? Why no examination of what this says about, the very least, the potential alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda at which the mainstream media has always scoffed?

Why was there hardly any examination of the incredibly weak response of the Arab world to this event? Why no hard look at what it is about the Arab mind that makes an act this despicable seemingly acceptable to so many? Why so little mention that Berg, like Daniel Pearl before him, just happened to be a Jew?

These are just some of the questions that should have provided the news media with numerous angles of the Berg story to pursue, should they have had the desire to do so. I have no doubt that had they been able to captivate the soccer moms with Berg's plight while he was a hostage and BEFORE he was slaughtered, that commercial considerations (especially during a sweeps month) would have dictated a far more vigorous pursuit of this story. The fact that he was already dead before we got to know him evidently rendered his tale of little long-term economic value. This sad reality speaks volumes about the pathetic state of our news media and our culture.

After watching how the world has largely failed to react to the murder of Nick Berg, it is difficult for me to envision how we can possible win this war on terror. After all, those who control the information we receive seem to be rooting for the enemy.

As Gary Snyder has observed: "Once a bear gets hooked on garbage, there's no cure."

the world has largely failed to react to the murder of Nick Berg

I get the 'point', but this is BS.

These acts aren't 'sex' or 'pornography', they were specifically designed to break those prisoners for interrogation. To sort of class it as nothing more than cheesy amateur porn is really just a lame attempt to cover up the actual brutality and make the media (ie the whistleblowers) accountable.

The second piece is just too subjective, it characterises the author's reactions to the events. Oddly, he ends the article with the observation that:

Quote:

the world has largely failed to react to the murder of Nick Berg

I'm not in the US, maybe you guys didn't even notice it, but it sure has made an impact everywhere else.

The point of the article is that the US news media is treating the affair as free amateur porn. It gets people to watch TV and read newspapers and magazines looking for the nude bodies. Nicholas Berg's death had no naked bodies so we didn't see it nearly as much.

In my view, the reason that prison abuse is still getting news coverage is because it is an ongoing news story and it has not been resolved.

I have been watching the news everyday since the horrible beheading of Nick Berg and it is still being discussed. They have showed the picture where those with hooded faces are standing behind Nick Berg everyday since the story broke. They have interviewed his father everyday as well. Most people agree that it was a horrible and cowardly act.

The way I see it, I think you and others are just peeved that most of the American public are disgusted and dismayed that our country abused others and want to learn the truth about it rather than just passing it off as a few bad apples who abused those that didn't deserve any better treatment anyway.

As for the main general point of your thread, I think it is absurd.

OK, let me get this straight.

First, according to the GOP propaganda masters headed by Karl Rove, to exercize your rights as an American, and question and criticize Lord Bush and his war, was tantamount to treason and evidence of being unpatriotic.

Now, if the media reports the story of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses which were nothing short of human rights violation, violations of international law and the Geneva Convention, makes the media porn distributors?

Am I detecting a trend here? LOL!!!!!

The Times' trick last October, in echoing Neier and the Red Cross, was to spread a counterfeit version of the Geneva Conventions, designed to cripple America's prosecution of the War on Terror, and empower her enemies. The counterfeiting starts with the notion that the Conventions are somehow "international law" and universally, unconditionally binding, though when one reads between the lines, one sees that in the Neier/Red Cross counterfeit version, the Conventions are unconditionally binding on the U.S., but not on her enemies. In fact, the Geneva Conventions have the character not of international law, which is a fiction, but of a treaty, even if this particular treaty has 188 signatories. Thus, the actual Geneva Conventions apply only to military conflicts between High Contracting Parties, say America and France; they do not apply to conflicts between a High Contracting Party and "illegal combatants," of whom terrorists are the classic example. Some of the characteristics of illegal combatants are the lack of a uniform or the equivalent ("insignia"), identifying them as soldiers; the refusal to openly carry arms; the lack of a commanding officer responsible for combatants' actions; and the refusal to follow the laws and customs of war. Illegal combatants do not receive the status or rights of prisoners of war.

As for who the army is going to prosecute and that telling the tale, they are conducting investigations into their own selves and deciding the punishments. It is not credible.

Evil off the hook

By ANDREW BOLT
14may04

The horrific slaughter of Nick Berg should be compulsory viewing for those who seem to have forgotten who our real enemy is.

IT took a long, long time to saw off the head of Nick Berg, and for nearly a third of it you could hear the 26-year-old American screaming and gurgling.
I know that because I saw the video his five killers - Islamic terrorists - made of his murder.

It is God-awful to watch, and ends with one of these animals holding up as a trophy Berg's severed head, eyes staring in shock. The video was then rushed to an al-Qaida-linked website, which gleefully published it.

The ABC seemed annoyed to have had this interruption to its wall-to-prison-wall coverage of the "torture" of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

"Beheading deflects focus from Iraq prison scandal," sighed the headline of the ABC Online report.

Sorry, but shouldn't that have read: "Beheading puts Iraq prison 'scandal' in focus?" After all this hysteria over pictures of Iraqi prisoners being made to pose naked, there's nothing like a live-on-video decapitation to remind us what real evil looks like, and to make us ask if a media that forgot the difference helped to kill Nick Berg.

It was probably about the very time this video of Berg's murder was being sent to the al-Qaida site that I found myself in a heated argument on ABC TV's Insiders program.

I'd dared to say that much of the coverage of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail was an irresponsible attempt by anti-war commentators to use the, yes, disgusting behaviour of a few out-of-control American soldiers to vilify not just the US army, but America itself, and to discredit the liberation of Iraq.

And I asked whether it was dangerous for media outlets to so lavishly run photographs of that abuse if they honestly believed what they were saying - that these pictures were a recruiting tool for al-Qaida.

After all, the Age's Washington correspondent co-authored a piece that approvingly quoted a critic saying: "If you want recruitment tools, these are the best anyone could imagine."

The Australian's Washington correspondent exclaimed: "What a recruitment poster for the Iraqi resistance, never mind Osama bin Laden." ("Resistance"? These throat-cutters are to be honoured as the "resistance"?)

Yet what do these and so many media outlets from London to Sydney do with their "recruitment posters" for Osama bin Laden?

Why, they run them again and again. They run them huge on their front pages, and put them on their websites. And their commentators droolingly describe them as horrific, proof of Yankee bestiality, and ample excuse for the Iraqi "resistance" to strike back.

Islamic terrorists got the hint. Berg's killers read out a long statement as he sat on the floor before them, waiting to die, saying they were about to punish the US for its sins at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by the pictures in the Western media.

"How can a free Muslim sleep as he sees Islam slaughtered and its dignity bleeding, and the pictures of shame and the news of the devilish scorn of the people of Islam - men and women - in the prison of Abu Ghraib," their leader shouted.

So, was it worth publishing those photographs now that Nick Berg has had his head hacked off? And remember, these photos were first published at least three days after the US army publicly revealed details of the abuse and charged - as is necessary - the allegedly guilty soldiers.

Of course, when I suggested on TV the media reconsider the wisdom of repeatedly publishing their "recruitment posters for al-Qaida", I was shouted down by the other panellists. That's the way a free media in a free society works, I was instructed.

Actually, it's not the way the free media works if the facts don't fit their agenda.

The media didn't endlessly show the video of the 2002 beheading of reporter Daniel Pearl by al-Qaida operatives, or scream for apologies from al-Qaida's backers in the Saudi Arabian Government.

Nor did they endlessly run the video the Iraqi "resistance" made last month of Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi being shot in the head by his captors.

Why weren't we shown it? Too shocking? Too likely to get us angry with the Iraqi "resistance"? Too likely to give us the "wrong idea"?

That last excuse, by the way, was the one SBS gave us for not screening the tape it shot of the Grand Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilali, praising suicide bombers in his mosque.

Nor did many Western correspondents in Saddam's Iraq bother us too much with the ugly truth.

The admired John F. Burns of The New York Times last year accused correspondents who reported alongside him from Saddam's Iraq of having "behaved as if they were in Belgium", rather than in a tyranny: "The essential truth (about Saddam's genocidal regime) was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here."

As CNN executive Eason Jordan admitted only after Saddam was toppled, his network refused to tell us of staff who were tortured, of assassinations planned by Saddam's sons, and of a woman torn apart "limb from limb" by police, and then dumped in bits on her father's doorstep. None of this CNN had reported, Jordan said, because "doing so would have jeopardised the lives of Iraqis".

But there's no such fear of telling the dirty truth - painted in darkest black - about the US. And there's sure no concern that "doing so would have jeopardised the lives" of not Iraqis, but Americans like Nick Berg. Or that exaggerated criticism of America would give us the "wrong idea".

But that's the Western media, too often aiding al-Qaida by exaggerating the regretted mistakes of the US while going soft on the unapologetic barbarism of its foes.

So should the media keep publishing pictures likely to incite terrorists, both overseas and here at home?

Probably not if they truly believe these are recruitment posters for terrorists who'll kill us in "revenge". Why not just describe the pictures in words? How many beheadings is a lurid photo spread really worth?

But there is one compelling excuse for running the pictures from Abu Ghraib (although without the hype and endless repeats), and it's time more journalists and commentators used it.

The fact is that such photographs in themselves do relatively little to recruit terrorists to al-Qaida, whose members want to kill us no matter what we do. Who want to kill us whether the guards at Abu Ghraib were mean or mice.

If that's the excuse, then let's not have these ludicrous claims that the terrorists kill only because we drive them to it through some wickedness of ours.

Let's not have headlines like The Sydney Morning Herald's yesterday that described Nick Berg's murder as "Chilling pay back over abuse" - falsely implying, yet again, that we just brought this terrorism on ourselves through our sins.

Let's not have Islamic terrorism excused as the understandable acts of men driven mad by American or "Zionist" crimes. Let's not have the Bali bombing blamed on our liberation of Afghanistan.

As we've already seen from the video executions of Daniel Pearl and Fabrizio Quattrocchi, al-Qaida and its allies didn't need the excuse of Abu Ghraib to film its killing of hostages.

As we saw this week from the video of Hamas gunmen posing with the body parts of six Israeli soldiers, and offering to "trade" them, Islamic terrorist groups have invented obscenities that far surpass in evil any offence we may have caused. And we should remember, too, that al-Qaida and its friends have being blowing up people for years - Americans, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Saudi Arabians, Turks, Moroccans, Iraqis, UN officials, Red Cross workers, Jews, Christians, Masons, Australians and so many more.

They started their terror long before the "torture" of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and long before the liberation of Iraq or Afghanistan.

The murder of Nick Berg is just the latest atrocity of an enemy of matchless savagery, and many more people will yet die in this war with a rising militant Islam.

It's time more in the media realised just who our greatest enemy really is - and trust me, it isn't America or a handful of its prison guard bullies.

If the media must publish pictures from this war on terror, let them include plenty of our real enemy and its satanic deeds. Then the abuse at Abu Ghraib will be put in the focus that's been all too deliberately blurred.

"When you mix young people who grew up on a steady diet of MTV and pornography with a prison environment, you get the abuse at Abu Ghraib."

Abu Ghraib Denial, Part 2
Right-wing culture warriors are on the case.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 4:11 AM PT

Stop the presses! Chatterbox predicted May 11 that right-wing culture warriors would soon be blaming the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on the depravities of the 1960s. But various readers alerted Chatterbox that quite a few conservative commentators (most of them second-tier) have already come tantalizingly close to making just that point...