TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution

[DeepModem Mom]

WP/Reuters/Hollywood Reporter: TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution
By Paul J. Gough
Reuters
Friday, December 29, 2006

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Television networks face a killer of a conundrum with the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, whose hanging could be videotaped and perhaps aired on Iraqi TV....

***

ABC and CBS said they wouldn't air the full execution if the video became available....Phil Alongi, special-events executive producer at NBC News, said there are ways the network can approach the video or photographs that will get the point across without having to be graphic.

The operative word: taste.

"We have very, very strict guidelines with how to deal with that," said Bob Murphy, senior vp at ABC News. "If there were pictures made available of the execution, they would have to be viewed by senior management before we would put them on the air, and we would make a judgment of taste and propriety of what we would show."

CNN and Fox News Channel still were discussing what they would do if the footage were made available. It also wasn't clear what the newly launched network Al-Jazeera International would do. An e-mail and phone call to the channel's Qatar headquarters weren't returned Thursday. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Al-Jazeera's pan-Arab channel has never shown an execution.

While video of an execution would be unprecedented in U.S. television, the war in Iraq has led to a number of judgment calls on graphic video. The U.S. military released graphic photographs of Saddam's two sons who were killed in a U.S. raid on their Mosul hideout in July 2003.

"We edited down the pictures to show only what was appropriate, what we thought was appropriate," Murphy said. "We didn't show the pictures live (when the network received them), and we made sure that they showed enough of the bodies so that it was clearly them, but we didn't dwell on it."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[Trajan]

1. Sick fucks ...

I guess everyone has forgotten that the propriety of Capital punishment is ITSELF questionable .....

I am supposing they have moved beyond that question ....

A BUNCH of sick fucks ...

[earlybelle]

20. My sentiments exactly. I hope one of his jailers gives him a pill before his execution.

I will take great delight in robbing the sick souls who want to see this hanging. It's like these people are wearing white sheets and hoods and standing around a tree in MS or AL in the 40' and 50's.

[saigon68]

22. Or standing near a tree in (gasp) 1930 Indiana

[earlybelle]

21. BTW, I love your photo!

[WindRavenX]

2. It stuns me that Americans think that this is justice

NT

[Erika]

5. Me too. They are slow coming to the truth

This is a W execution on a foreign being.

W will answer. (While he's smiling at the raking in of billions)

[kysrsoze]

56. It's an execution of a foreign head of state, regardless of what a bastard he was

[Name removed]

8. Deleted sub-thread

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[melm00se]

31. the death penalty is not justice.

it is vengence pure & simple.

[Erika]

3. Is W showing his trophy execution

since he couldn't get OBL. This is f'n sick. W's law carried out on an Arab nation.

[seriousstan]

4. CNN aired the sniper video, with blackout. I expect the same.

[Bobbieo]

6. What does one wear to a 'tasteful'exection - full formal attire?

J J and M!!!

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[WCGreen]

9. I think they should show us a tasteful shot of a shadow....

Dangling in the cool evening Baghdad Breeze....

[saigon68]

15. A Tasteful Hanging

The U.S. has lots of experience in this area

Especially if the object of affection is a "darkie"

Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South.

[ixion]

18. that is a very gruesome and ghoulish picture

that is really serves as a metaphor for American society, as well as 'tasteful' hangings.

Just because people wear decent clothes, that doesn't necessarily make them decent.

[saigon68]

19. It is one of 100 Life Photographs that changed the world

Breaker Boys1910

What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.

[ixion]

23. thanks for the source

I knew I'd seen it somewhere before, just couldn't remember.

[saigon68]

24. I imagine these 3 will live on as a Legacy of Iraq-Nam

[saigon68]

25. Here is the link to the 100 photographs

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm_index.htm...




Birmingham 1963

For years, Birmingham, Ala., was considered “the South’s toughest city,” home to a large black population and a dominant class of whites that met in frequent, open hostility. Birmingham in 1963 had become the cause célèbre of the black civil rights movement as nonviolent demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly faced jail, dogs and high-velocity hoses in their tireless quest to topple segregation. This picture of people being pummeled by a liquid battering ram rallied support for the plight of the blacks.





Dead on the Beach 1943

When LIFE ran this stark, haunting photograph of a beach in Papua New Guinea on September 20, 1943, the magazine felt compelled to ask in an adjacent full-page editorial, “Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore?” Among the reasons: “words are never enough . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.” But there was more to it than that; LIFE was actually publishing in concert with government wishes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Americans had grown too complacent about the war, so he lifted the ban on images depicting U.S. casualties. Strock’s picture and others that followed in LIFE and elsewhere had the desired effect. The public, shocked by combat’s grim realities, was instilled with yet greater resolve to win the war.

[Barrett808]

10. This isn't an Onion headline?

Ah, well, into the dystopian 21st century we plunge.

[KansDem]

32. I thought the same thing: the words "TV" and "tasteful" in one sentence.

I reeled at that juxtaposition.

[WritersBlock]

11. Tasteful execution. Jesus. What have we become?

I have been looking for the comparison figures on how many Iraqis Saddam killed, versus how many have died in Bush's illegal war.

Whatever happened to "And Justice for All?"

[Chipper Chat]

13. What's next? "Tasteful" rapes live on Fox?

I have a feeling Tikrit and Baghdad will explode after the trap door is enabled. Delirious Sunnis may just provide the world with a new cornucopia of mass revenge killings. Bushie-boy is salivating at the thought - "bring 'em on" he is chanting with hot blood-thirsty breath.

[MGD]

12. How tasteful will it be when he loses muscle tone in his anal sphincters?

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

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[saigon68]

16. enjoy your stay

It will be short

[Ayesha]

17. The networks are irrelevant

It'll be up on YouTube within hours, along with the requisite music video remixes.

Saddam is a scumbag and I won't be sorry to see him go, but I'd prefer if they'd have locked him up in some windowless cell to be forgotten. Making his death into a spectacle is sickening and risks making him a martyr.

[MaineDem]

26. Disgusting!

What have we come to? I'm so disgusted by George Bush right now.

[cut.your.crap]

54. Insults to father now avenged

I knew this coming the day he was nominated in 2000.

[AtomicKitten]

27. "tasteful" and "execution" used in the same sentence

is a sign we have truly gone around the bend as a nation

[Vinca]

28. Janet's booby: bad. Sadam's execution: good. I'm confused. nt

[Karenina]

47. Don't be...

We're long since through the looking glass! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

[liberal N proud]

29. Any coverage of an execution is SICK!

But the "librul" media will eat this up like vultures circling overhead waiting for the final breath.

[LynnTheDem]

30. And we're "better" than Iran? China? Uzbekistan? Saddam Hussein?

How, exactly?

[LanternWaste]

33. A "tasteful execution"?

A "tasteful execution"? Much like "friendly cancer", "happy, fun Parkinson's Disease" or "attractive leprosy".

If this is aired commercially in the States, I'll see as nothing more than another hurdle of our inhumanity crossed, achieved and finally cheered.

[raccoon]

34. Oxymoron, that. nt

[Seabiscuit]

37. That's the first word that popped into my head, too. n/t

[LeftHander]

35. WalMart, Ford and Levitra sponsors....nt

[zonkers]

36. Yup, Regis and Kathy Lee are covering it live.....

[BluePatriot]

38. Bet it will be all over the Internet anyway (nt)

[davsand]

39. Reminds me of that Don Henley song.

Dirty Laundry

I started hearing it mentally last night when i saw Paula Zahn on air with some guy with a medical model demonstrating what happens when you hang someone.

I swear she looked like she was having sex when she was saying that the blood flow into the head is is constricted and you really DON'T bleed into the eyes when you are hung.

..."We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
in her eye
It's interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry..."

The final verse pretty much sums it all up, I think:


"...You don't really need to find out what's going on
You don't really want to know just how far it's gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry..."


What have we become?



Laura

[ninkasi]

55. I was quoting that song to my husband tonight

It just seemed to fit the occasion. I feel sick to my stomach.

[AlCzervik]

40. how can an execution be "Tastefully covered"? Seriously?

i give up, i really do.

[crim son]

41. Can there be any doubt that this country has fallen into the hands

of somebody who is pure evil? We are being encouraged to watch an executions, for chrissakes. I feel ill.

[VegasWolf]

42. I just hope this execution drives Bush COMPLETELY fucking nuts. Sick fuckers

like Bush think revenge will bring some solace to their sick, fevered minds. Revenge never does, it only heightens the mental imbalances.

[superconnected]

50. He'll likely only get an erection.

[VegasWolf]

43. "tasteful"?? WTF?? Are they going to do it at the White House? nt

[smirkymonkey]

44. This is so wrong, on so many levels.

I feel like I have stepped into the Twilight Zone or something. Does anyone else feel like they are going mad?

I'm just speechless.

[NYC]

46. It makes me think of gladiators.

I almost hear the crowds cheering.

[saigon68]

58. Its irony taken to a new high

[Quantess]

45. The most appalling thing I've heard this week.

This is why the world hates us.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

48. This is horrifying...

This is going to shine a spotlight on US, with a glaring reminder to the rest of the world that Saddam is no worse than, or not even as bad as bu$h, cheney, and countless others in (or behind) our administration.


"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." --John Donne

[superconnected]

49. George was the execution king when he came in.

He figured it out that it's okay to kill people if you classify them as bad.

Saddam will just be more blood on bushes hands, whether they're women who have killed one person, mentally disabled people that kill, american soldiers getting killed or iraqis, its the ultimate murder - a murder he gets cheered on for as he's killing. Now a days its systematic killing he installed, so move on, more blood on bush's hands, nothing new.

[Cass]

51. This bloodlust is extremely disturbing. I am very upset at the

spectacle surrounding this execution. Saddam should have been tried fairly and properly at the Hague - this trial and execution will reflect very badly on the United States for a long time. I am very worried for our soldiers in Iraq because they will be caught up in the violence that is sure to escalate as a result of his execution.

[kysrsoze]

57. Bingo. You nailed it - THE HAGUE. Where was the real trial?

[NorthernSpy]

52. yeah, the MSM have got class coming out the ass...

If anyone can bring us tasteful hangings, it's them for sure.

[Ilsa]

53. "...But first, we have to round up some hungry lions..."

[BlenderWizard]

59. Morons

You people are all a bunch of morons. How do NOT understand that this trial was: 1) conducted in Iraq 2)presided over by an Iraqi judge, and 3) heard by an Iraqi jury?

Saddam's execution was prescribed by Iraqi law, and carried out by Iraqis. We caught him, then we turned him over to the Iraqis.

You morons can blame Bush all you want (for what, I have no idea. The punishment actually got as close to fitting the crime as i've seen in recent history), but the was totally an Iraqi thing.

For those of you who claim this punishment was unjust, instead of just repeating that, how should he have been punished?