One Year Ago: Hanging in There With Saddam

By: Greg Mitchell (This article first ran just over one year ago, on the final day of 2006, with an update added on January 1, 2007.) With the videotaped execution of Saddam Hussein last night, newspaper, online, and TV editors in the U.S. debated what, if anything, to show of the act.

As promised, video and photos of the event were aired on Iraq TV a few hours after the 10 P.M. ET execution. When the time came, a photo from the video was quickly posted on cable news outlets in the U.S. and at the top of the Web sites of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, showing Saddam with the noose being fitted around his neck.

They chose not to run another photo that shows Hussein after the execution. USA Today?s site, however, carried three pictures in a gallery, with a second photo of the noose-fitting scene?and a shot of Saddam on the floor after the act, with blood near his mouth.

The New York Times later put up a 70-second video of Saddam getting the noose fitted around his neck, stopping short of the actual hanging. (The video screen was adjacent to an ad for the current movie about crazed strongman Idi Amin, The Last King of Scotland.) The Washington Post also put up the same video, somewhat less prominently.

Fox News may have been first to air footage on American TV, also stopping the images just before the hanging. CNN International also apparently aired it at the same time. CNN, among others, put up over a minute of footage on its Web site, leading to the actual hanging, showing an oddly calm and dignified Hussein ready to meet his fate. It was preceded by a warning of ?graphic? images to come.

Early this morning, the Associated Press also showed a close-up of Saddam on the floor after the hanging, with a little blood near his mouth, and it was quickly posted at Yahoo News and the Drudge Report. The caption read: ?This video image released by the Biladi TV stations, which are affiliated with the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, appears to show the body of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein wrapped in a white shroud following his execution.?

Earlier, on CNN, Anderson Cooper, shortly after the 10:00 P.M. hanging, had said that photos and video were expected to be released by the Iraqi government shortly and that the network would review them and air what it finds ?appropriate,? after warning viewers. What the images might also show, according to one eyewitness to the event, was observers chanting and dancing around the body.

Bob Murphy, the senior vice president of ABC News, said that ABC News would not allow its Web site to show anything more than what is permitted on television. ?The decision will be for all of ABC News,? Murphy told the Times. ?What is excluded for ABC News on television will be excluded for all ABC News outlets.? The Times report concluded: ?And a representative from YouTube did not respond to questions about the policy of that popular video site, which has previously offered videos with graphic battle footage from Iraq.? Amazingly, YouTube in short order has become a major player in the news business.

In a statement delivered with no apparent irony, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said, ?Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him.?

Earlier Friday, in an editorial, the New York Times observed, ?This week began with a story of British and Iraqi soldiers storming a police station that hid a secret dungeon in Basra. More than 100 men, many of them viciously tortured, were rescued from almost certain execution. . . . Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won?t either.?

By chance, today brought another milestone that cannot be disputed: The reported 3,000th American military fatality in Iraq. It comes at the end of the bloodiest month for American forces since the first siege of Fallujah in November 2004.

Update:
One day after becoming the only major U.S. paper to carry a graphic photo of Saddam Hussein after his execution on its front page?and above the fold, at that?the New York Times took up the question of TV networks debating whether to run a cellphone video of the dictator in his moment of death.

Bill Carter wrote on Monday, ?No national American television organization has thus far allowed the moment of the drop to be shown. But the same niceties were not observed on numerous Web sites, which have posted the complete video, including the moment that Mr. Hussein, noose around his neck, falls, and a close-up of his face afterward.? The article noted that the networks carried the footage?but cutting off before his death was show, some explaining that they did so because the accompanying audio was newsworthy.

Carter did not mention his paper?s decision to run the photo above the fold on its front page the previous day.
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