Thread title shamelessly stolen verbatim from a post on Slashdot:
I find the question really interesting and I'm not entirely sure where I stand on it myself. On the one hand, I'm usually vehemently anti-censorship and would prefer that everyone have access to any information they want at any time. On the other hand, it does occur to me that broad exposure is exactly what these terrorist groups want, and it's for the purpose of spreading fear and horror. I don't know if seeing things like this is necessarily bad for people, though. Uncomfortable, to be sure.Erik Wemple writes at the Washington Post that Fox News recently took the controversial step of posting a horrific 22-minute video online that shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death. Fox warned internet users that the presentation features "extremely graphic video." "After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video," said Fox executive John Moody. "Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content."
But Fox's decision drew condemnation from some terrorism experts. "[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS's media arm," said Malcolm Nance. "They might as well start sending them royalty checks." YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site it would be taken down. CNN explained that it wouldn't surface any of the disturbing images because they were gruesome and constituted propaganda that the network didn't want to distribute. "Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video — which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause — but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing 'strong, earth-shaking and decisive' retaliation."
I'm reminded of reading about the Vietnam war and how it was a brand new thing for people living during that time to see images of war on their televisions at home. I got the impression that that in itself was in no small part responsible for the scale of the antiwar protests. In the past people had mostly just read text accounts of fighting going on overseas, and when they were more disconnected it was easy to overlook. Reading that a number of people were killed is a lot different than seeing the bodies and the devastation. Now we're living in a time when the people whose homes are being bombed have access to the technology to post video of these things themselves. The world is changing.
But then, this video wasn't made by a bystander caught up in something and just documenting his life. This is carefully produced propaganda intended to shock and in some way further their cause (personally I don't understand what their cause is or how this helps them, but I know it's intentional). It's not the first time I've seen someone burned alive, and I've been more disturbed by videos of african mobs beating individuals half to death before lighting them on fire - those videos weren't made to be propaganda, I don't think.
I dunno. What do you guys think?
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