Nick Shulz vs media restraint

Over at the National Review Online is an opinion piece by Nick Shulz. First, however, the editor must weigh in to warn of the graphic detail Nick will go into and hopes the news media will show us the pictures from Sadaam's days as a torturer.

On principle this is newsworthy - and weighing heavily on our deliberations was the fact that a group of United States senators held a press conference on June 2 during which they showed the horrific video and near no one covered it - in fact, to this date, I am aware of no mainstream news organization other than the New York Post yesterday - in an opinion column - that has even mentioned that this new, Department of Defense-provided, video exists and has been shown on the Hill.

On principle this is newsworthy - why? No one disputes that Sadaam was a bad man who tortured his own people. I have not read one single story that claims otherwise. So why is it newsworthy to show video footing that must have been taken over a year ago at least proving things we already knew? Shulz himself says I could make this argument (and obviously I will) but seeing these videos will help one "grasp the indescribably monstrous horror, the Satanic villainy, the unrivaled evil of Saddam's regime." Again, not a claim anyone refutes. And when I hear a man gets his hand cut off, I don't need a video to gather how brutal and disgusting it must have been.

And the nature of the thing, when reading Shulz's account, reads like scenes from the banned Faces of Death series. The NRO wants that on the six o'clock news? The NRO wants our kids to be exposed to that on TV? Shulz' conclusion? Yes.

But a few things, reported by the major media, lead me to the conclusion that the press has an obligation to report on these tapes, and has a further obligation to release at least some portions of them, in some way.

I think, though that Shulz would forget what is my main tenet when it comes to the US/Iraqi abuse photos. The reason the US abuse pictures are shocking is not because of the images on film, but rather that such images could and seemingly were encouraged to occur by us, the country that went to war at some point to prevent torture and humiliation of prisoners from happening.

There are many stories of US abuse that sound horrible, too. Bush claims that this was a battle of good vs evil. But when the good do evil things, what then? How can we claim a moral high ground when our own actions in Iraq result in the death of twenty-seven prisoners and abuse of seventy five more? Is the only thing that makes us better is we don't have video tapes of these events, or at least they haven't been released? Would Shulz advocate the US news media showing these instances to our children at dinner time as well? To leave it to parents to explain why the good US soldier is suffocating a man in a sleeping bag and throwing cold water on him until he dies?
Shulz tries to avoid this question by framing it against the media.

I've no doubt the videos and stills of Americans torturing captives still unseen by the public are wretched and that the potential damage that can be done if they are broadcast would be immense. And now that the media have run with the first round of photos and videos, it will be difficult for them to justify not showing another, this time more horrid, round.

If these videos do come out, and the news media shows them, and they are just as gory as Shulz claims the Hussien tapes are, then I will eat crow and apologize to the guy. I really will. For now, however, I think the media's restraint is a reasonable response to an obscene situation.