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| May 11, 2004, Associated Press - Nick Berg This image shows American Nick Berg, shortly before he was beheaded by terrorists. Far more graphic images of his killing were available. Would you run images from the beheading? On front page of newspaper and on website: Journalists: 22% / Readers: 16% On inside page of newspaper and on website: Journalists: 17% / Readers: 12% On website only: Journalists: 5% / Readers: 7% Only link to an outside source from website: Journalists: 8% / Readers: 9% Would not run images at all: Journalists: 47% / Readers: 55% |
Terrorists captured American citizen Nick Berg in May 2004, then released a videotape of his beheading. Details of the killing have been largely left to the public's imagination, because few media outlets ran more than a picture of Berg seated below his hooded killers.
Even that may have been too chilling; forty-seven percent of journalists and 55 percent of readers said they wanted nothing to do with any of the images at all. Of those who would have published a photo, nearly all were extremely careful to say they'd never consider anything beyond Berg at the feet of his captors. If there's a line where graphic pictures go from important to inappropriate, beheadings are clearly on the other side of it.
"It's horrible and we need to know that it's happening, but watching someone plead for his life and then die a violent death isn't accomplishing anything," said Kylie Polzin, a reader from Goose Creek, S.C.
"Having watched the tape, the other images were way to disturbing for printing," said Alan Hawes, a journalist from Charleston, S.C. "I've witnessed some very disturbing things in this business, but even viewing a videotape of this shook me about as hard as some nasty things I've see with my own eyes."
As they did with the street executions in Baghdad, respondents wondered whose purposes are being served by running photos of Nick Berg's beheading.
Michael Segers, a reader from Lakeland, Fla., asked: "Does the photo work more FOR the captors (they want this image out) or AGAINST them (showing how awful they are)?"
Journalists repeatedly referred to the video as terrorist propaganda. "I also have some concerns about helping the terrorist agenda or endangering civilians by showing this type of image," said Sanne Specht, a journalist from Medford, Ore. "I think it's a journalist's job to faithfully disclose the reality of any situation. But this one troubles me greatly."
McBride, of the Poynter Institute, said the source of the video should make this decision an easy one.
"In the same way that running a slick PR photo provided by a corporation undermines your journalistic independence, so does running photos provided by terrorists," she said. "You further their agenda. The only way you could justify such a decision is to say that public good somehow outweighs the compromise. I have yet to see a case where it does."