Bad taste? Pornography? CNN just showed pictures of Iraqi casualties.

And the pictures were fairly graphic, too. I'm not quite sure why we're seeing them because it used to be bad taste to show these sorts of things. Aaron Brown of CNN kindly told us why:

http://zena.secureforum.com/znet/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=3397

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AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Aaron Brown; when Jeremy just asked you about civilian casualties you said 'oh you are talking about collateral damage', I thought that was an interesting response because I don't think, in this country, we would ever refer to someone as collateral damage. It's sort of inappropriate, and then you went on to say a school was bombed. Even that issue, and the question of reporting the facts. The facts of war are casualties. There are many, many pictures that are now coming out of Iraq of dead children, women and men. There are hundreds of them. In the foreign press, it is a very different picture that is being shown on the TV screens and in the newspapers- they're showing dead people. We don't see that very much in this country, what are your thoughts on that?

AARON BROWN: Amy I am not sure I understand the question.

AMY GOODMAN: I'm just asking about showing pictures of people being mutilated or killed that we see in the foreign media a great deal?

AARON BROWN: There are clearly differences in the kinds of pictures CNN would consider appropriate to put on television -- on any side -- than the ones Abu Dhabi television would put on. I have seen it, and the program has, at least on 2 occasions specifically, and on many occasions more broadly -- discussed whether or not we have over sanitized. This is not, to me, a political question, I understand, that in the context of this discussion, everything is political. It is a journalistic question, it is a question of taste. It would be a very difficult decision to make for me, I make them as well as I can. I saw things on the first Sunday of the war, that, if you put a gun to my head I wouldn't have put them on TV because it was just too- it was pornographic, in my view. But it certainly showed the violence of war.

more...

What's changed? Why is it OK now? Surely Aaron Brown didn't mean it was bad taste to show civilian casualties caused by US actions but OK to show civilian casualties caused by those opposed to the US. But what exactly did he mean? I'm confused.

"Four legs good, two legs bad."

Next week, Aaron Brown will be telling us

"Four legs good, two legs better."

Aaron Brown is just another jingoistic jackass. That's the kind of stuff that just really makes me mad, and I'm sorry if it offends anyone. It makes me completely ill to think our men and women have been sent off to do something no human being should ever have to do. That they will have to live with the horrors foisted on them by this dispicable administration, and the rest of us sit here in the padded cell that has become America and watch nicy-nicy pro-America footage.

Goddammit, I say the bastards who wanted this thing so badly ought to be FORCED to sit and look at the results until they deal with the exact same nightmares our troops will....at least those that make it home outside a body-bag.

I'm not going to care if only things get reported...what ever it takes....America need to know.

Thanks, and kick.

If the war is just, then it is up to its promoters to defend it and justify it.

But simply not showing the horror of war allows the public to remain in its willful ignorance.