E&P: Graphic Images of Dead Zarqawi Dominate Front Pages -- a Few Decline

Editor and Publisher: Graphic Images of Dead Zarqawi Dominate Front Pages -- But a Few Decline
By E&P Staff
Published: June 09, 2006

NEW YORK -- As shown on their Web sites on Thursday, few newspapers are reticent to display graphic close-up images of the dead head of slain terrorist Musab Abu al-Zarqawi, and today they turned up on front pages all over the country, sometimes filling half the page.

Since this was the common approach -- from the Los Angeles Times to The New York Times -- it was interesting to note the papers that avoided it.

The vast majority of papers, as they had done on the Web the day before, carried at the top of their front pages either a large image of the bloodied face of Zarqawi being held aloft at a Washington, D.C. briefing, or a tight close up of the same deathly visage from a video image. The Los Angeles Times, which did not use one of the images on the home page of its Web site on Thursday, threw it across the top of its front page today.

Leading the pack, not surprisingly, was the New York Post, which devoted its full front page to the dead head, with the headline "Gotcha!" and a quote bubble leading from Zarqawi's mouth with him saying, "Warm up the virgins."

As noted by some commentators, this was in stark contrast to newspapers' general ban on showing pictures of dead U.S. soldiers or Iraqi civilians....(I)n considering the wide showcasing of the death photo, Washington Post staff writer Philip Kennicott today wondered if "as with so many images in this war, it is loaded with the potential to backfire." It might add to his martyr status -- "and it reminds others how much this war has been about cycles of killing, retribution, tribal and sectarian violence, and the most primitive destructive urges....

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651018

"it reminds others how much this war has been about cycles of killing, retribution, tribal and sectarian violence, and the most primitive destructive urges...."

:thumbsup:

I kept thinking it made us look no better than the terrorists we killed. Didn't everyone recoil in horror when the terrorists in Iraq did the same thing with American victims they had killed? What is the difference? Is that too simplistic to wonder? Or too complex?

If you want to stop terrorism, you can kill as many as you can find.. but they're like weeds. Did you ever weed your garden and encounter a weed that, when grabbed, shot out hundreds of weed seeds further into the garden just as the weed itself was being killed? That is terrorism. You can, and should capture and try those who kill and maim.. that is a given. But simply killing does not stop terrorism, it multiplies it, it creates more terrorists. If the belief of terrorists is that death is an honor, you are not deterring terrorism through death. By parading photos of dead terrorists all across the media, you are creating martyred heroes in the eyes of terrorists and those that can be manipulated into that sect. By following the rules of decency, even in the face of a most vicious and indecent enemy, you are not flaming the flames of hate and distrust that will continue to burn against our Country. Kill the guy, sure. Show his death photos across the world like haunted paprazzi? What does this accomplish in the war on terrorism?

Conservatives, when presented with this idea of stopping terrorism institutionally, will react with such predictability. They will claim that anyone wanting to look deeper into the causes of terrorism, and the exploration of non-violent ways to stop it (in addition to the legal and police actions necessary as well), is weak and trying to hug or coddle terrorists. They are wrong. It is the fool that believes killing one person will stop the insurgency in Iraq, or terrorism in the world. Intelligence, diplomacy, fair treatment, and tolerance, and police actions. That is the only sane approach.

they are encouraged to show graphic images of dead "evildoers".

Fuckers.

Mounting it on poster board would have been enough! Instead, someone bought a really expenseive, large, pretty frame for it.

Crazy.

But what's $1000 for framing a picture when you're spending billions on this war?

Outdoing themselves yet again....how much lower can they possibly go?

our 'enemy's' blooded visage in WWII. I don't even remember this kind of thing during the Vietnam War -- there were bloodied images -- but mainly that spoke of the horror of war -- I don't recall picture used to gloat over the death of some so-called enemy.

I've noticed people are comparing the display of Zarqawi with that of the four contractors killed in Fallujah and our soldiers killed in Somalia.

Now, even though some find the display of Zarqawi distasteful, there is a huge difference - the bodies of those killed in Fallujah and in Somalia were handled that way to desecrate and humiliate them and to horrify America. The display of Zarqawi is being done to show this asshole is dead. If everyone is honest and recalls, citizens of Iraq reportedly are very, very skeptical when it comes to the death of these folks. I can still remember how skeptical they were when it came to the capture of Hussein.

Sadly, it looks like Dems are going to be successfully painted with the "can't give our troops a break" brush or that we are unable to admit when something good does happen in Iraq.

I'm sorry, but I am glad this man is dead and to be completely honest, if it helped our soldiers in Iraq, it wouldn't even bother me to see Bush fly over to Iraq and relieve himself on this man's corpse.

Folks, let's see this Zarqawi asshole for what he was: HE CUT PEOPLE'S HEADS OFF WITH A KNIFE IN HIS HANDS. I have seen the videos.


And do not take this as a Iraq war defender. I hate this war and think Bush should be impeached over it.

(And I'm sure someone will accuse me of buying into the Bush machine propaganda about Zarqawi - but this man was an animal.)

prove to Iraqis that Zarqawi is dead. Same with the ghoulish parading of Saddam's dead sons in 2003. It is worse than tasteless. It is barbaric, and we (supposedly) are not.

We seem to be using this war, and what the other side does, as an excuse to give into primitive urges. God knows where it will end, or when we will finally be ashamed of this period of time when we forgot what it is to be civilized people.

I wonder how the Western nations would react if middle eastern media
were printing e.g. graphic images of slain soldiers who had shot
women and children in cold blood... 'venting some pent up steam'...
and then afterwards got killed by enraged citizens.
Ah yes... of course with the equivalent of GOTCHA and maybe, hm,
'Start warming up that cloud to sit on and tune the harp.'
Or something like that, got to keep that crusade on track.

Sorry, I'm just utterly disturbed and disgusted. No matter what evil animal
(a contradiction in itself by the way) a human was while alive, you just don't do that sort of thing.
You're supposed to be civilized, damnit!

Ok... rant over.
It's just that the thin veneer of civilization is so easily cracked,
with the result of the leader of the free world's poll numbers going up.
I'm shaking my head in disbelief.
The death of this one man does not make the world a better place,
as nice as it may be to think so. And yes, you probably have to show 'prove'
(whatever that word may mean within this war and with this administration)
that you eliminated an enemy. But there are different ways to do that. *sighs*
Sorry. I'm just afraid and angry.

our troops coming home in coffins. Make the war look one sided on TV.
How fair and balanced is that?

reinforces hatred by stimulating repressed violent urges and propagates in an abject manner the myth that "we are winning" when there is strictly nothing to win.

courtesy of Kinkos.

Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Dallas Morning News, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, Des Moines Register, Christian Science Monitor, Omaha World Herald, Buffalo News, Newsday, The News & Observer, Akron Beacon-News, The Blade of Toledo and the Columbus Dispatch.

(condensed from article linked in OP; (smirk) E&P buried the lead (smirk))

Probably done out of fear of offending advertisers rather than any high-minded journalistic ethics, but kudos to them nevertheless.

Zarqawi reminds one of the wax museum figures, this dude survives 2 500 lb. bombs on the premise he may have been outdoors when they hit?

:eyes: