Iraqis outraged by video of Marine killing man in raid
Posted: Nov 17th, '04, 10:08
OK... So how are supposed to win this "war" when this kind of stuff keeps happening....??? Isn't this kinda the same thing as what happened in Vietnam? If someone speaks out against these kinds of things... Will it reflect badly on them if they run for president in the future??? Have we turned down a bad road when it comes to reporting atrocities??? Does morality end at the boarder of a "red state"?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq ... edia_x.htm
Iraqis outraged by video of Marine killing man in raid
By Sabah Al-Anbaki, Peter Johnson and Mark Memmott, USA TODAY and Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor
The grisly video of a U.S. Marine shooting to death a wounded Iraqi in Fallujah on Saturday is getting heavy airplay on Middle Eastern TV and stoking anti-American anger. (Related story: Military launches probe)
While many Western military experts were being quoted Tuesday in various news media as saying the Marine's action may have been a justifiable act of self-defense, discussion boards on Web sites devoted to extremist Muslim causes were buzzing. A common claim on those sites: The killing was an execution and part of U.S. policy.
"The U.S. did this to state clearly that the occupier will kill you like this if you resist," one message began. It was read 8,000 times — "pretty high traffic for these types of sites," said Toby Jones. He tracks Islamist trends for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
On the streets of Baghdad, some Iraqis reacted with anger to TV broadcasts of the killing. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network showed the video repeatedly Tuesday.
"When I saw the video, I wished I had a stronger gun and (could) spray that soldier with 100 bullets in his head," said 39-year-old Issam Mohammed, who sells sodas.
Ironically, the video's very existence is because of the U.S. military's prewar decision to "embed" journalists with troops. That decision was inspired in part by a hope that bringing reporters along would help counter any distorted charges about what U.S. troops were doing.
The scene was captured by Kevin Sites, a freelance reporter working on contract for NBC News, and his photographer. They were with Marines on Saturday when the troops entered a mosque in Fallujah.
Sites' video was shared with the other four major American TV networks, three British networks, Reuters TV and Associated Press Television News. Those organizations agreed before U.S. forces attacked Fallujah that they would "pool," or share, all video footage taken by their embedded correspondents.
It took NBC until about 1 p.m. ET Monday to get its report ready to give to the other networks because it wanted to interview the Marines as well as their commanders. Reports using Sites' material hit the air shortly after 5 p.m. ET Monday on Fox News Channel and CNN. MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC followed with stories starting around 6:30 p.m. ET.
John Stack, Fox News' vice president of news gathering, credited NBC with "handling this expertly from the pool's perspective."
There was no sign Tuesday at the Pentagon that officials were rethinking the embed program. Tom Rosenstiel, director of Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism, said any controversy shouldn't doom the system. Embedding, he said, has "allowed the public to see the war and not just hear about it secondhand."
Bob Calo, a journalism professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said that the video of the shooting is a reminder that modern technology can bring the horrors of battle home to Americans much faster than in past wars. It's notable, he said, that "we really haven't seen much personal violence given the fact that the war has been going on for a year."
American TV viewers didn't get quite as much of the video as those in the Middle East. While U.S. networks edited the video so that it stopped just before the shot was fired, Al-Jazeera chose to show the entire sequence.
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said "the image itself (of the shooting) was newsworthy."
The network has chosen not to broadcast video of what may be the execution in Iraq of aid worker Margaret Hassan. It has also not broadcast executions of other hostages killed by terrorists in Iraq.
"Hostages are caught in the crossfire, and we do not want to offend their families" by showing their deaths, Ballout said. "Soldiers are on the battlefield and (are) part of the story of war."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq ... edia_x.htm
Iraqis outraged by video of Marine killing man in raid
By Sabah Al-Anbaki, Peter Johnson and Mark Memmott, USA TODAY and Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor
The grisly video of a U.S. Marine shooting to death a wounded Iraqi in Fallujah on Saturday is getting heavy airplay on Middle Eastern TV and stoking anti-American anger. (Related story: Military launches probe)
While many Western military experts were being quoted Tuesday in various news media as saying the Marine's action may have been a justifiable act of self-defense, discussion boards on Web sites devoted to extremist Muslim causes were buzzing. A common claim on those sites: The killing was an execution and part of U.S. policy.
"The U.S. did this to state clearly that the occupier will kill you like this if you resist," one message began. It was read 8,000 times — "pretty high traffic for these types of sites," said Toby Jones. He tracks Islamist trends for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
On the streets of Baghdad, some Iraqis reacted with anger to TV broadcasts of the killing. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network showed the video repeatedly Tuesday.
"When I saw the video, I wished I had a stronger gun and (could) spray that soldier with 100 bullets in his head," said 39-year-old Issam Mohammed, who sells sodas.
Ironically, the video's very existence is because of the U.S. military's prewar decision to "embed" journalists with troops. That decision was inspired in part by a hope that bringing reporters along would help counter any distorted charges about what U.S. troops were doing.
The scene was captured by Kevin Sites, a freelance reporter working on contract for NBC News, and his photographer. They were with Marines on Saturday when the troops entered a mosque in Fallujah.
Sites' video was shared with the other four major American TV networks, three British networks, Reuters TV and Associated Press Television News. Those organizations agreed before U.S. forces attacked Fallujah that they would "pool," or share, all video footage taken by their embedded correspondents.
It took NBC until about 1 p.m. ET Monday to get its report ready to give to the other networks because it wanted to interview the Marines as well as their commanders. Reports using Sites' material hit the air shortly after 5 p.m. ET Monday on Fox News Channel and CNN. MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC followed with stories starting around 6:30 p.m. ET.
John Stack, Fox News' vice president of news gathering, credited NBC with "handling this expertly from the pool's perspective."
There was no sign Tuesday at the Pentagon that officials were rethinking the embed program. Tom Rosenstiel, director of Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism, said any controversy shouldn't doom the system. Embedding, he said, has "allowed the public to see the war and not just hear about it secondhand."
Bob Calo, a journalism professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said that the video of the shooting is a reminder that modern technology can bring the horrors of battle home to Americans much faster than in past wars. It's notable, he said, that "we really haven't seen much personal violence given the fact that the war has been going on for a year."
American TV viewers didn't get quite as much of the video as those in the Middle East. While U.S. networks edited the video so that it stopped just before the shot was fired, Al-Jazeera chose to show the entire sequence.
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said "the image itself (of the shooting) was newsworthy."
The network has chosen not to broadcast video of what may be the execution in Iraq of aid worker Margaret Hassan. It has also not broadcast executions of other hostages killed by terrorists in Iraq.
"Hostages are caught in the crossfire, and we do not want to offend their families" by showing their deaths, Ballout said. "Soldiers are on the battlefield and (are) part of the story of war."