"I don't think anybody in our audience failed to understand what happened to Nick Berg," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, whose network described Berg’s murder but did not show it. "I don't think anybody watching [World News Tonight] could fail to understand the brutality and violence of what was perpetrated. Therefore, we feel we did our jobs the way we were supposed to."[1]
But would it generate the kind of anger a powerful image will?
"If you turn America's stomach, you turn around public support at the same time," Felling said. "All the news reporting, all the language, all the written word in the world does not have the effect of one brutal video image."[2]
And when anger is subtracted, what is left? What is going to be felt, watching someone wearing an orange jumpsuit begging helplessly for their life? Remember, Bigley was not begging the terrorists holding him for his life, he was begging Tony Blair. How do we feel, hearing these poor men blame our leaders, even suspecting that their statements are under extreme and extraordinary duress?
To answer that, it is necessary to first go back and explain the symbolism behind the orange jumpsuits themselves. Obviously they are the omnipresent symbol of the detention center at Guantanamo, but leaving it there is too simple. When the very first detainees arrived in Cuba, a picture circulated around the world of them in transit to their cells, immediately after having been taken off the plane. They were in a narrow, outdoor corridor, chained off, in two rows, each row of men facing out, hands bound behind their
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- ↑ Matt Zoller Seitz, "What TV Doesn't Show and Why," Newark Star-Ledger," May 14, 2004, p. 63, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=92941542167782bc2a052390060d5580&_docnum=10&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVA&_md5=8f04cde6e9836941d93695439c31c5a6.
- ↑ Stannard, "Beheading Video Seen as War Tactic."
