TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution

[Barring unforeseen circumstances, Saddam Hussein will be hanged Saturday morning. Unlike the New York Times, where the implications of the killing were mulled over in a thoughtful editorial today ("The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein"), the big worry at the networks, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is not over the morality or political or military impact of the action but whether it will be suitable for viewing by children.]

By Paul J. Gough (Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter)

Television networks face a killer of a conundrum with the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, whose hanging could be videotaped and perhaps aired on Iraqi TV. The timing of Saddam's date with the gallows was unclear [now scheduled for Saturday morning], but late Thursday CBS, NBC and Fox News Channel reported that the former dictator, convicted this year in the deaths of 148 people in 1982, would be turned over by the American military to the Iraqi government within 36 hours and hanged before the start of a Muslim holiday on Sunday.

Several sources said Saddam's execution would be videotaped by the Iraqi government, though it wasn't clear whether it would be released to the public or broadcast.

"We will video everything," Iraqi National Security adviser Mouffak al Rubaie told CBS News. Judging by the Iraqi government's release Tuesday of videotape of the hanging of 13 convicts, it could be a gruesome affair.

Meetings were held Thursday in at least two network headquarters over how to handle the potentially graphic images. ABC and CBS said they wouldn't air the full execution if the video became available.

"We're very aware that we're coming into people's living rooms and that there could be children watching," CBS News senior vp Linda Mason said. Mason and her network counterparts have broadcast standards and procedures they follow in these cases. Phil Alongi, special-events executive producer at NBC News, said there are ways the network can approach the video or photographs that will get the point across without having to be graphic.

The operative word: taste.

"We have very, very strict guidelines with how to deal with that," said Bob Murphy, senior vp at ABC News. "If there were pictures made availableof the execution, they would have to be viewed by senior management before we would put them on the air, and we would make a judgment of taste and propriety of what we would show."

CNN and Fox News Channel still were discussing what they would do if the footage were made available. It also wasn't clear what the newly launched network Al-Jazeera International would do. An e-mail and phone call to the channel's Qatar headquarters weren't returned Thursday. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Al-Jazeera's pan-Arab channel has never shown an execution.

While video of an execution would be unprecedented in U.S. television, the war in Iraq has led to a number of judgment calls on graphic video. The U.S. military released graphic photographs of Saddam's two sons who were killed in a U.S. raid on their Mosul hideout in July 2003.

"We edited down the pictures to show only what was appropriate, what we thought was appropriate," Murphy said. "We didn't show the pictures live (when the network received them), and we made sure that they showed enough of the bodies so that it was clearly them, but we didn't dwell on it."(The rest of the story.)

Time's Person of the Year: You?

For eight decades, TIME Magazine has chosen a man, woman, or idea that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year." Charles Lindberg was the first to get the nod, in 1927 when he was just 23. Others on the slow-news-week cover have ranged from FDR and Pope John Paul II to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin (full disclosure: Yours Truly has made it twice: in 1966's "Twenty-Five and Under" -- and again this year: "You"). Since the 1979 selection, Ayatullah Khomeini, blew up in its face, the magazine has shied away from controversial picks. So it should come as no surprise that this year Time ignored the choice of its readers -- Hugo Chavez (Chavez got %35, followed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 21%, Nancy Pelosi and The YouTube Guys at 11% each, G.W. Bush -- whose impact on foreign policy and domestic politics could hardly have been greater -- 8%, Al Gore -- doesn't raising the Q-rating of Global Warming count for anything? and when will that can of worms be on the cover? -- 7%, Condoleezza Rice 5%, and Kim Jong Il 2% -- in favor of a bland appreciation of people who make videos about their pet iguanas and mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals. It's not that blogging and YouTube and MySpace aren't significant, but it will take more evidence than Time presents in the current issue to make the case that this "social experiment" amounts to a "revolution."

The old In-and-Out (S)urge

The press hasn't taken much notice, but once again The Decider has decided to change his story.

You may recall that, in the hours following the Republicans' November election debacle, Bush vowed not to be swayed by public opinion. Instead, he said, he would follow the lead of his carefully chosen kennel of generals.

However, as A. Alexander points out in the Progressive Daily Beacon, now that the "Joint Chiefs of Staff and practically every actively serving General strongly opposes George W. Bush's proposed Iraq 'Surge' Plan...you've probably not heard too much about the Generals' general discontent. The average American probably hasn't heard about it, because the media only barely reported on the Generals' mutiny. True to form, the press dutifully ignored the Generals' concerns, but widely reported on the White House's insistence that the Generals generally didn't disagree with the President....However, in the event that the Generals, who don't disagree with the President, do decide to disagree with the President's Iraq 'Surge' plan - the President doesn't care, because he's 'The Decider.'"

The press' blackout of the generals' opposition to "The Decider's" scheme, Alexander adds, "even continued when Rumsfeld's very Rumsfeld-like 'stay the course' replacement, Robert Gates, traveled to Iraq and was told by the 'commanders' on the ground that they, too, disagreed with 'The Decider's' Iraq 'Surge' Plan. Indeed, these were very dark days for 'The Decider' and his dream of escalating the Iraq War. Fortunately for 'The Decider,' the press was mostly ignoring the Generals' collective revolt" (for the rest of Alexander's commentary, go to The Progressive Daily Herald).

In more ways than one, it's all remindful of the venerable L.A. bumper sticker applauding the "In-and-Out urge."

Alexander goes on to note that, while ignoring the generals and the equally adamant opposition to the surge that Gates encountered among field officers during his pass through Iraq, the media discovered a story it could love in the covey of privates, PFCs and corporals who told Gates they supported the president's "surge." As Alexander puts it, "while they continued to ignore the Generals' mutiny, America's fine press was all over the comments made by fifteen fresh-out-of-boot camp Privates."

The establishment media have been woefully -- shamefully -- sycophantic since the day the NeoCons began ballyhooing this ill-conceived and incompetently executed "war." The shame continues. The sad fact is that no democracy can survive without a free, independent and responsible press. Keith Olbermann and the faux journalists on the Comedy Channel notwithstanding, we are without an independent Fourth Estate.

At our peril.

What is Judith Regan's Sin?

Humorless curmudgeon Abraham H. Foxman, who runs the Anti-Defamation League, has issued a public condemnation of publisher Judith Regan in which he wonders why Regan “resorted to raising the Jewish issue” in the telephone conversation with HarperCollins lawyer Mark Jackson that got her fired. That’s a good question, and the lack of consensus as to what exactly Regan meant, underscores the extreme arbitrariness of her termination. Team Murdoch is carrying on as if Regan’s comments are obviously anti-Semitic, but it’s far from obvious she expressed any such sentiment, and other than the hypersensitive Foxman, nobody has even tried to explain the pejorative nature of identifying perceived enemies as Jews, which according to HarperCollins, is about the only thing Regan did that caused her dismissal. Specifically, HarperCollins has accused Regan of opining that Jews "should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie" and of characterizing her detractors as a “Jewish cabal.”

So why did Regan mention the religion of her supposed antagonists? Was she implying that all Jews naturally conspire against all Gentiles, or was she suggesting only particular Jews who’ve allegedly been ganging up on her are so inclined? Or maybe she was arguing that all or certain Jews are misogynistic, and she has been targeted because she is a strong woman. Perhaps Regan actually meant that all or certain Jews are controlling, or secretive, or cranky, or argumentative, or stupid, or incompetent, or mean. Was she trying to tell Jackson that whatever bias she ascribes to Jews is omnipresent, or something that exists only in certain circumstances? Although Regan’s precise meaning cannot be readily ascertained, Team Murdoch’s strange position seems to be that there is no doubt something about what she said is somehow anti-Semitic, and for some mysterious reason, they just can’t be specific about that which they purport to be certain.

Of course it’s possible Regan didn’t mean anything derogatory, and there’s nothing to what she said beyond the plain meaning of the words she spoke, which is that given the historic persecution of Jews, when the decency czars came after her over news of a book that offended them, she would have expected greater support than what she got from ostensible allies who are Jewish. Why is expressing that feeling a fireable offense so egregious that it warrants an immediate physical ejection of Regan from her office by security guards? What sort of a tattletale is Jackson that hearing Regan’s outlook would prompt him to complain to higher ups?

Regan’s dismissal and the cancellation of her O.J. Simpson project are the consequences of forces that are both censorial and tyrannical. The vigilantes who pressured Rupert Murdoch into withholding “If I Did It” from the public, never bothered to reveal how Simpson might be entitled to earn income, nor did they indicate what rule he broke, and now Regan herself has been subjected to a similarly vague charge. In both cases, disapproving bullies who possess no discernible principles have demonstrated a dangerous lust for random punishment, while Regan and Simpson, whatever their sins might otherwise be, have done nothing but express harmless opinions. -- Jeff Norman

Who really fired censorship victim Judith Regan?

While Julie Bosman and Richard Siklos are reporting in the New York Times that “Rupert Murdoch personally ordered the dismissal of Judith Regan,” Jeffrey Trachtenberg claims in his Wall Street Journal article that it was actually HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman who made the decision, and Murdoch was merely “informed of the firing.” After I contacted him by email, Trachtenberg insisted his version is correct, but he refused to identify his source or explain why he is so confident.

Accuracy and anonymous sourcing are just two of the many journalistic and moral issues that have been triggered by the most recent controversy surrounding superstar-turned-pariah O.J. Simpson, who is the subject of a cancelled book and television special which had been scheduled for release by HarperCollins and Fox Broadcasting respectively. In a previous post, I argued that censorship is an aspect of the story that deserves more attention than it has received. To their great discredit, media professionals who earn substantial salaries selling sleazy infotainment, and who generally claim to favor open debate, called successfully for the censorship of “If I Did It,” the book in which Simpson reportedly muses about how me might have twice committed murder, although we don’t know if the book really contains such ruminations, because we have been prevented from reading it by a subculture of self-appointed decency czars.

Now that she has been fired, Regan herself has overtaken Simpson as the focal point of analysis concerning the entire episode. While stories about all the behind-the-scenes machinations certainly provide entertaining reading, it’s unfortunate that the issue of censorship continues to be ignored, because its application here is far more consequential to society than most other elements of the brouhaha. But as the comments of Huffington Post readers indicate, many folks are clinging to the misconception that withholding the O.J. book and television special from the public, does not even qualify as censorship.

The problem is that far too many people attach undue significance to cheap emotions. As it relates to the Simpson/Regan/Murdoch matter, the condition is so severe that many otherwise intelligent people have been stricken with an inability to comprehend the simple meaning of censorship, which like all words, is determined by dictionaries and common usage. An example of the latter determinant is that the person whose job it is to delete nudity, swear words, opinions, etc. from various works, is typically called a censor. Likewise, dictionaries define censorship as the suppression of speech based on moral or political objections to its content, whether or not the censor is a government entity, and whether or not the victim of censorship has any alternative means to express the censored speech. Obviously, the O.J. project was cancelled due to moral objections. As such, the aforementioned elitists are advocates of censorship, and Murdoch is a censor.

The contention that only normal market forces are at work here, is disingenuous. If this really was about business as usual and insufficient public interest, the book and TV special would not have been slated for commercial distribution in the first place, or they would have come out and been largely ignored. But instead what happened is a bunch of aristocrats announced how offended they are, and they bullied Murdoch into pulling the plug by threatening to continue harming his company’s reputation and financial status if they don’t get their way. Despite unsupported claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Murdoch reversed his plans after formulating a new assessment of consumer demand for his products. Murdoch understood the controversial nature of “If I Did It” from the outset, and the judgment had been made that enough people would buy it. Indeed, thousands of copies of the book had already been shipped to stores before Murdoch succumbed to a public relations crisis created by a few loud whiners. Usually, publishers care only how many people will buy a book, not how upset the non-buyers are. What changed the equation here is that some of the non-buyers happen to be Geraldo Rivera, Bill O’Reilly, Fred Goldman and Denise Brown, all of whom enjoy extraordinary access to the media and who are far more capable of shaping public opinion than are ordinary Americans. Any dispute over gauging alleged mass disapproval is a red herring anyway, because efforts to silence or curtail unpopular speech are reprehensible no matter who does it, and the identities of those who want to punish Simpson by undermining his livelihood, have no bearing on the definition of censorship.

The claim that Simpson can simply choose another way to tell his story is preposterous, because the copyright to “If I Did It” is owned by HarperCollins, and according to published reports, “all copies of the book will be destroyed.” Furthermore, in deference to professional victims Fred Goldman and Denise Brown, the company might not sell its rights to anyone. Brown, of course, is an unhinged drama queen who accused Murdoch of offering her and Goldman’s families “hush money,” a charge so ludicrous that even Goldman family attorney Jonathan G. Polak felt compelled to publicly deny it. It’s not that the relatives of murder victims deserve no sympathy; it’s that if a publisher wants to release a book, and members of the public want to read it, it should not be necessary to first obtain Brown’s permission. Believing that such permission is required is believing in censorship. -- Jeff Norman

For more information: U.S. Tour of Duty.