by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
May 17, 2004
The vast majority of media outlets have chosen not to show the beheading of american Nick Berg. Berg, an american who was doing business in Iraq was kidnapped and shortly after his body was found, a video showing how he was killed appeared on a terrorist website.
The reason that the media will not show it is because the pictures are deemed to be too gruesome. at least some media like the CBC state why they are not showing it. But showing Berg being decapitated, as gory as it is, would serve a purpose.
Let’s go back to September 11, 2001. For those of us who didn’t know anyone who died that day and to whom the World Trade Center was just a couple of big buildings in a far away city, the shots of the buildings collapsing didn’t look any different than films of buildings that are intentionally demolished with a controlled detonation and that are often shown on television. What really made the enormity of the events of that day sink in was watching the people who jumped to their deaths from the upper floors of the towers. Watching those helpless people die helped people to better understand George W. Bush’s statement that "we’re at war".
The Berg execution has been given extremely little attention in the media considering the barbarity of the act. It received a lot less coverage than that given to Daniel Pearl, who met a similar fate. The fact that Pearl was "one of their own" gave the media greater impetus to cover it extensively. a more important reason for the relatively scant coverage of Berg is that it is secondary to the major Iraq story of the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of the americans. When the media reports of what happened to Berg are placed along side the more extensive coverage of abu Ghraib, complete with graphic pictures of naked Iraqis wearing dog collars or women’s underwear on their heads, the media is helping the cowardly scum who killed Berg to convey their message that his brutal death was justified.
Show the video. Let’s hear what the senators and Democrats who have said that the abu Ghraib pictures are the most disgusting things they have ever seen have to say about Berg’s death. If the pictures of Nick Berg being murdered by having his head sawed off with a dull knife were shown, it just might help those people who think that the americans are the real bad guys in all this. It wouldn’t help John Kerry; but it might help the public understand the true nature of terrorism.