By: (AP) Some newspapers ran graphic photos Thursday of the charred bodies of Americans killed in Iraq, while the images were largely shunned by American TV that deemed them too graphic.
Eight photographs of the Fallujah attack were transmitted Wednesday by The Associated Press with an advisory to editors to "Note graphic content."
An AP photo of the bridge scene with two bodies was used on the front page of The New York Times.
"On the one hand, you can't shy away from the news, and the news in this case is the indignities visited upon the victims and the jubilation of the crowd," said Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor. "At the same time you have to be mindful of the pain these pictures would cause to families and the potential revulsion of readers, and children, who are exposed to this over their breakfast table."
Similar images were on the front pages of The Miami Herald and the Boston Herald.
The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, which has a large military presence, ran a similar photo on an inside page. It was accompanied by a note that tells readers that the editors realize the photo is disturbing, but they felt the responsibility to run the picture to give a full accounting of the story. They suggested readers not show the photo to children.
The Chicago Sun-Times ran the bridge picture on page 3, while the front page one showed Iraqi crowds celebrating next to a burning vehicle.
The Boston Globe opted for a Page One photo of smiling Iraqis standing alongside a burning car, and inside a Reuters photo of crowds beating a body, barely visible, with shoes. USA Today and The Washington Post ran that photo on the front page.
Four civilians working for a U.S. security company were killed and their burned bodies dragged through the streets of the Iraqi town of Fallujah on Wednesday. Jubilant Iraqi residents dragged two of the charred corpses through the streets and hanged them from a bridge, which the United States denounced as "horrific."
The images were aired widely around the world, but American television largely deemed the images too graphic.
"Quite honestly, it doesn't need to be seen in full in order to convey the horrors of this despicable act," said Steve Capus, executive producer of "NBC Nightly News."
Fox News Channel planned to limit its images to shots of the burning vehicles in which the civilian contractors to the U.S. government had been riding -- and to shots of joyous crowds in Fallujah.
"We have no plans to show more graphic footage," said Bill Shine, Fox's vice president of production. "We made the call that it was too graphic in nature to put on our air."
Despite what competitors may do, "Right now, we're going to stay with the decision we made," Shine said.
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