Akilling that is broadcast
on live TV is
not unprecedented.
It was nearly 50 years ago
that TV news cameras captured
the fatal shooting of
Lee Harvey Oswald by
Jack Ruby. But as someone
who woke up sleepy-eyed
one morning late last week
and, as I still lay in bed,
switched on the TV just in time to see
the reports on the capture and execution
of Moammar Khadafi, I couldn’t
help but think to myself that this is a
little bit too much for morning TV.
Or any other time of the day for
that matter.
It was a bizarre end that was perhaps
fitting for a man who had lived a
bizarre life. A heartless dictator and
international terrorist in his own
right, you could always count on
Khadafi to be unpredictable. One day
he might show up wearing some
Lawrence of Arabia get-up. The next
day he might be dressed like the bell
captain at a midtown Manhattan hotel.
I don’t know about you, but a warning
that “the footage we are about to
show you is both dramatic and graphic,”
only makes it that much harder
not to pay attention to what’s being
shown on the screen.
You might as well tell me
not to think about the elephant
in the room. Not that it
matters if you wanted to
change the channel. Before
you can grab the remote control
and hit the “off” button,
the video of a bloodied and
badly wounded Khadafi is
being shown.
Craig Smith
And a few seconds
after that the video of
his corpse is being spread across the
30 diagonal inches of my flat screen
TV. Mercifully, we weren’t shown
what happened in between, but it
doesn’t take too vivid an imagination
to figure it out. I don’t dispute the fact
this was an important story, it clearly
is. But is it really necessary to show
these video images in all of their morbid
color?
I put this question to Peter
Shaplen, who for many years worked
at CBS News and who is now a freelance
news producer and media consultant
based in the San Francisco Bay
Area.
“I’d say thanks to the way he was
portrayed over the many decades in
the western press (think Pan Am 103
and so much more) the networks’
decision to show his battered, bloodied
and bullet ridden corpse was
almost too easy,” Shaplen told me via
e-mail. “In the post 9/11 world the
American desire for revenge,
vengeance and a taste for blood in
the region runs strong. The networks
may well have sensed that, and
in turn felt they could show those
images with impunity. The public outcry
of “too much” or “distasteful”
seems to have been barely a whimper.
It proves their decision to be safe.”
James Rainey, who writes the
twice-weekly “On the Media” column
for the L.A. Times has a different
view.
He told me via e-mail, “I think
there was much less justification for
media outlets to run the truly gruesome
and disturbing video of the
bloodied and brutalized Khadafi in his
final moments. No matter how loathsome
the figure—and Khadafi was
plenty loathsome—how does the
world benefit seeing any human being
tormented and killed?”
Rainey did acknowledge the need
for corroboration when it is claimed
that a fugitive despot like Khadafi has
been captured and killed.
“In Libya and the Arab world,
Khadafi has had such iron-fisted control
and such a mystique that anything
short of a death photo likely would
not have convinced many people that
he was gone.
It could be argued that more than
one still photo would be necessary to
both identify the Libyan leader and to
make it evident that he had died. I
think there is somewhat the same
interest in the outside world, as
Khadafi was an outsize figure and his
end is obviously newsworthy. That
said, I don’t think it’s necessary to
run the bloodiest, most gruesome
photos available. And there was an
overabundance of those.”
And like myself, Rainey seems to
think that the warnings given before
the images were shown were ineffective.
Rainey noted at least one instance
when the warning had not even been
uttered and the video was already up
on the screen. “Stations replayed the
video so many times that one warning
at the top of the segment wouldn’t
have shielded everyone; certainly not
those who just tuned in. Khadafi’s
crimes against humanity did not
justify news executives subsequent
crimes against restraint and human
decency.”
As for myself, I tend to be a little
squeamish about these things, but
even so, this was one morning when I
simply couldn’t turn off the TV and
roll over and go back to bed.
Craig Smith is a blogger and
observer of the cultural scene.
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