Are the media excessively sanitizing the pictures from the bombings?

self

[ken5050]

This is an act of war, worse than Pearl Harbor, right? Maybe 40,000 folks have died. Yet we haven't seen a body. I'm not in favor of gore (lower case, no pun intended) and mayhem for it's own sake.....yet at Pearl Harbor we saw the rows of bodies laid on the tarmacs, we saw the burned bodies floating in the water..here, we see pictures of shoes, cell phones, and piles of documents...and it helped to fuel the rage and passion of the American people.

[ken5050]

In a natural disater, I can understand the rationale for self-censorship, but in war, and this is war, the people have a right to see what has been done to their country and loved ones. During the Vietnam war, we were treated every night to pictured of our bloody, maimed, and dead soldiers, in a carefully orchestrated campaign to turn Americans against the war..

Yet now, all we hear are the talking heads blabbering about the pictures that we can't show you..The media is already starting to make the whole thing far too"touchy-feely"....the magnitude of the destruction is almost too large for many people to grasp...consider that more rescuers died in the WTC than all the victims of Oklahoma City.....the pictures of the planes hitting the WTC towers are surreal, almost a video game image...I believe that we need to see up-close, the hard images of what was done to thousands of people.

All the pictures from the scene are long rangew..the rescuers looklike ants, and heavy equipment like Tonka toys....it's supposedly to " to shelter and protect us from harsh images".....well, to me folks, that's pure BS......we need to see up close the horror of the attack, to make sure that it never, ever happens again...

Your thoughts???

[ken5050]

Comments??

[stainlessbanner]

I heard from a friend who works at CNN in Atlanta that they filter pictures and scenes before broadcasting. If you noticed some of the initial footage (of people jumping from the WTC) was pulled soon after it aired.

[Rudder]

O'Reilly was scolded by some viewers for showing people flying out of buildings. No wonder one commentator called us a bunch of pansies.

"If ignorance isn't bliss, then I don't know what is." (Frank to Ernest)

[bvw]

Good thing! I've seen carnage in person and on video. The video gives me more nightmares. In reality you can actually intellectualize it better and deal with it.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

I think the answer is YES, and that's just fine with me. Over time we will be able so see with our own eyes the utter devastation in NY, DC, and PA.

[Tree of Liberty]

Fox is showing many bios of people who were in the towers, along with interviews with spouses and other family members. I think that's even more powerful than seeing a nameless piece of flesh.

[jwalsh07]

No. Adults understand the devastation and children do not need the nightmares and hardening.

[mewzilla]

They can show all kinds of nudity, sex, fake violence, vile language on TV, but they won't show the news as it is...What the hell do they think they're protecting us from??

[Lazamataz]

Lets get the pictures from the Internet, as usual. We cannot trust the media to tell a true story, EVER.

[TheOtherOne]

I agree 100%. They show me live births and heart surgery, but they wont show me America at War.

Our press is pathetic.

[mdittmar]

Pardon my crudenes but parts is parts. Everyone knows that there are dismembered body parts and dead bodies everywhere.To broadcast it as propaganda as radical nations do would be both assinine and disrespectful to the families of the deceased.

America does not need to sink to that level to rally the patriotism of it's citizens.

[ForbesFan]

Everything needs to be shown, and burned into the minds of everyone. Only then do I believe that the outrage will be of the magnitude needed to wipe out our enemies. Let us not forget that we are not a country who wants to fight a war if American casualties are involved, so it might take horrific pictures to help move us in the right direction.

[Capt. Tom]

we need to see up close the horror of the attack, to make sure that it never, ever happens again Your thoughts???

Once the enemy has been identified those pictures can be used at a later date to justify our violent reaction. - Tom

[Carlucci]

I think the U.S. media should show the us what really happened. Look, when we retaliate, there WILL be civilian casualties. As gruesome as it sounds now, the terrorists and their sponsors will have no problem circulating pictures of their dead and wounded to bolster anti-U.S. sentiment.

War is awful. Censoring the images may seem like it's in our best interest now, but remember how quick the media was to believe Saddam's pathetic "Baby milk factory" pictures during/after the Gulf War.

[DB]

All I can say is I wouldn't want my wife's or my child's severed head on national TV for all to see and then repeated over and over for days. It would kill me, literally.

[mewzilla]

So the truth is propaganda? I don't want to see it either, but I want to make that decision for myself, not have it made for me by news outlets I don't necessarily trust in the first place. That's why televison remotes have an "off" button.

[Dog Gone]

Well, it does bother me greatly that the media is willing to show us graphic photos of foreign victims. Think of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos from the Vietnam war, and they are of Vietnamese that we are obviously "oppressing."

But we have apparently become squeamish in this country. We used to have public exections. They still do in many parts of the world. We have sanitized ours.

I don't know, though, that we need photos of dismembered and crushed bodies from Tuesday's attacks. We know they exist and we know the terror that the victims experienced, because we all witnessed it in real time.

[Rustynailww]

the enemy