[Media-watch] US media gives brutality a low profile - Telegraph - 24/09/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/24/wirq324.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/24/ixnewstop.html

 US media give brutality low profile
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 24/09/2004)

The day after Kenneth Bigley and his American
colleagues were kidnapped, a leading US comedian and
talk show host, Bill Maher, decided that beheadings in
Iraq were suitable comic material for the opening
monologue of his television show.

Mr Maher suggested that Iraqi militants had been
ignoring local rubbish collection rules on severed
heads. His studio audience roared with laughter.

Not everyone in America has proved as indifferent, or
insensitive. But the hostage crisis has been a
second-rank story for much of the American media.

There have been exceptions. CNN television twice
carried moving interviews with the wife of the second
American killed, Jack Hensley. USA Today, the leading
middle-market newspaper, ran a front-page story
yesterday reporting the shocked reactions of residents
and friends from Mr Hensley's home town of Marietta,
Georgia.

The story has proved a source of gory thrills for
teenage internet surfers. Web browsers have flooded
search engines, looking for the video of the killing
of the first American victim, Eugene Armstrong.

But major newspapers have consistently played down the
story.

On Wednesday, news of Mr Hensley murder made a
single-column story, near the bottom of the front page
of the Los Angeles Times. The news was carried on page
21 of the Washington Post, and on page 7 of the New
York Times. The Wall Street Journal ran a single
sentence in its news in brief column.

The simplest explanation is that America has been here
before in a way that Britain has not.

Mr Hensley was the third American beheaded in Iraq
this year, and the fifth American to suffer this
brutal form of murder since the war on terrorism
began.

Howard Kurtz, media columnist of the Washington Post,
said: "These stories are uniformly depressing.
Tragically, as these hostage killings become more
routine, they may have lost a little of their shock
value."

Mr Kurtz also suggested that American newspaper
editors - who are expected to be more high-minded than
is always the case in Britain - were wary of allowing
terrorists to force their way on to the front page by
the sheer brutality of their crimes.

"I don't think there were any secret meetings of the
media elite. But there seems to have been a
subconscious desire to play down these incidents and
not allow the terrorists to seize the press agenda,"
Mr Kurtz said.

A similar defence was offered by the Chicago Tribune
to its readers.

The paper's ombudsman wrote: "The Tribune doesn't want
to be in the position of a puppet with the Islamic
kidnappers pulling the strings. To grab the attention
of the American public and, yes, to terrorise them is
the reason Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his henchmen stage
these grisly murders."


	
	
		
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com