The Politburo Diktat

Damn you, you made me visit Wizbang!, something I haven't done since it went All Cutler, All the Time.

Suspicion confirmed.

Not just whores. Necrowhores.

I'll teach you some stronger Russian. :-)

But Commissar, why should that preclude you from mentioning the incident directly?

I really do appreciate your thoughts on this challenging little subject but, if you don't publish them and I don't publish them, who will? CNN, MSNBC, and FOX won't. They don't want to hurt anyones feelings.
People need to know what the real world is like.
And so what if I get 4 hits today as opposed to my normal 2?

I guess it's a personal decision. For me, the drawbacks outweigh the "public service" aspect.

Fair enough.

Commissar, good decision.

IMHO, text reports of prisoner abuse were mostly ignored. Pictures (released months after the text reports) inflammed emotions and captured the world's attention. You man say war is brutal, but when you print a picture of a S. Vietnam officer firing a gun inches from the side of the head of a bound man or a picture of a naked running girl the effect is different. Print pictures of our shame, but why withold pictures of theirs?

Or in other words: Take seasoned TV newsperson who really knows the business. Present two stories, (i) woman gets fed up with boyfriend and handcuffs him while asleep and cuts off his limbs with a bread knife, no pictures except outdoor shot of her apartment with police coming and going ("pretty good, presumptive lead") or (ii) guy gets fed up with his girlfriend in restaurant and punches her insensible in public while she pleads for mercy, videotaped by witness ("that's it"). Why? The presentation of story (ii) will engage and move people in ways story (i) has no chance. Also, equal exploitation of the people in either case.

Yeah, you have a point. It's something I wrestled with since making it into the top 10 of Yahoo for "Nick Berg Beheading Video" a few weeks back. I racked up bandwidth overages at my expense, but found much of my audience wanted to see it to confirm their disgust with the terrorists. Sure, there were a few snuff film whores trolling for free thrills. But in the end, what I started, and offered, being limited, could not stop.

Yeah, I often wonder if I'm turning into the same pseudo-neutral journalists who claim the right of the people to know. Am I different from Ogrish.com or ConsumptionJunction.com who offer rewards for sending them snuff flicks? In the end, we are offering the same thing.

But I offer this. My context is different. I encourage debate on the issue and position it in a pro-America, anti-enemy context. Trolls generally stop and run. Like minded people who are appalled stay and discuss.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but if we don't offer the truth - which is out there anyways - in a proper context, then it is pure porn. Imagine an issue of playboy with beaver shots surrounded by anti-porn ads, religious messages and articles about beating the urge to masturbate. Pun intended. You get the picture. The pure porn aspect would diminish over time.

Therefore, we need - no, must - offer context to what inevitably will be out there.
Scott

Doug_S

Interesting examples. The photo of the execution you refer to did happen, BUT it was "staged" for the camera. The execution was about to take place somewhere else, but the photographer arranged for a "shot" in the middle of the street instead.

I heard one Vietnam executioner had a deal with certain members of the media to conduct his executions at certain times of the day. Normally executions took place at night or before dawn. The poor light in those conditions wasn't suitable for the camera man, who persuaded him to execute during daylight hours.

The executions would have taken place either way, but it does illustrate the fine line between being a dispassionate observer and between becoming a part of the event. It raises similar issues for "embedded" journalists.

So Commissar

What are you going to do? See no evil hear no evil speak no evil? Or design a monogramed tea-set to match your butter dish? What'll it be? Heads? Or turn tail?

It is not particulary important for you, Michelle or Val to post those images, it is important that they be seen by as many people as possible. There was a reason that the Amerikanski newspapers and magazines printed pictures of the Bataan Death March during the Great Patriotic War.
would the Glorious Red Army functioned as well without the efforts of the propagandist Eherenberg?

Good decision Commissar. Thanks!

I understand the impulse to keep away the ghouls, but I agree with all those above who link images to our emotional response to the event.

For some reason as humans we must see something to really believe it. There is a completely different response to reading a story about this and seeing picturs.

Rusty: I think it's called the "Doubting Thomas" syndrome....

Agree 100% with Rusty. But with further thought, the Commissar is also right because when Drudge covers it, it's one thing, but there's no reason for a blogger like myself or the Commissar to post the things, EXCEPT to GET traffic.

I think that it depends on the milieu.

Bill, I agree with your last comment completely. Hope you don't mind me reposting it on my site.

Well, I'm not going to re-write everything I wrote over at Michele's but I wish you guys would stop generalizing and assuming all bloggers are doing it for the traffic.

Give me a break.

I linked to it to get the fricken point across! Because I'm pissed, because these assholes aren't listening and because if I have to shock the loving hell out of someone to open their DAMN eyes to the REALITY, then I will link to a fricken gruesome photo.

NOT for links or hits.

I hope I've made that clear.

Serenity,

I read a post of yours a while back, re: bloggers talking up their hits from Nick Berg. You were outraged!

Matter of fact, your outrage in that post started a lot of my thinking on this issue. I know you've take in it down some time ago, but I agreed with it.

In any case, there are pros and cons to this issue. I've weighed them, and have arrived at my conclusion. I don't disrespect another blogger who weighs the issues differently.

I am not going to pass judgement on individual bloggers about their decision to host or link to the pictures, but I do believe they help the terrorist more than they educate people. The argument about "people need to SEE what these people are capable of," strikes me as somewhat ludicrous considering how many of us watched the planes hit the towers. To each their own, but I will ask a simple question. IF you were the son, daughter, husband, wife, father or mother of one of the victims, how would you feel about your family member's fate being posted all over the internet. In the case of Paul Johnson it is even more ironic becuase so many people are using the pictures to stir up hate against all of Islam and all Arabs, including those who Mr. Johnson called friend, seeming to ignore the wishes of the family that his name and image not be used for that purpose, AND that many Muslims begged for his release this week, and condemned the murder.
It is indeed a complicated issue. But I join the Commissar, whom I respect very much, in NOT following the herd mentality, or capitalizing on the misfortune of Mr. Johnson to either benefit my blog, or to make a political point.

My outrage was not in the fact that anyone linked or hosted the video, Commissar.

My outrage was in the fact that people were spinning conspiracy theories left and right without knowing what the hell they were talking about.

My outrage was in one blogger who did his idea of "investigative reporting" and threw his little hypothesis on to the page and then stated, "If it's true, remember, you heard it here first!"

THAT was what outraged me. I have never been outraged by anyone showing the videos or the images.

Please remember that before painting me a hypocrite.

Serenity,

My apologies. My recollection of your post was overly generalized.

I did not mean to paint you a hypocrite.

Serenity,

I am a little confused as to why you find spinning so outrageous, when it is in fact the premise of so much blogging. To be bemused, ok, but outRAGED by blog-spiracy, investigative reporting and online hypothesi'? Why? One would never have a moment left to be serene!

I am one of those who doesn't care what other bloggers want to post. I don't want to pass judgement on them, they have their own reasons to post what the post, and to call them whores and profiteers as Michele did seems a bit on the extreme side.

There are reasons for showing the brutal atrocities that the terrorists are committing. Personally, I get madder and madder and madder everytime they do something like this. I am not terrorized, I am pissed as hell, and I dare any of them to come knocking on my door. I'd love to shoot them, starting with that dangly thing between their legs and working up.

I won't post a link to any pictures or videos simply because my psyche doesn't take well to seeing such brutality. But some people may need that to remind themselves of what we are up against, and if seeing a picture cements the memory of the outrageous brutality and evil of the Wahabists, then I'm all for it.

However, the main reason for commenting is your assertion that *most* bloggers run blogads. I'm pretty sure you are mistaken. Could be you only read bloggers in the top 50 spots of the ecosphere, but those of us down in the large mammal section and below don't typically have blogads.

Apparently John and I are missing out on this bandwagon, eh?

Emigre:

If you can't tell the difference between taking facts and trying to figure out what is really being said and viewing a video and coming up with one thousand conspiracy theories all in favor of the terrorists before Nick Berg's blood was dry, then I guess you'll never understand why I was outraged.

And if you can't get it, then I won't spend anymore time discussing it with you.

Commissar: No worries.

Serenity

And there in lies the difference between you and i. You outrage, while i post subtle repartee.

Everything we blog about is for the hits. Hits are readers.

I have no links to the pictures at all and I'm still getting a lot of Google traffic for having the words P@ul J0hns0n Behe@ded in the title, so much so that I changed the title and posted a notice that people would not find what they were looking for on my site. It's the law of unintended consequences, I guess.