Major news outlets are defending their decision to show gruesome images of a bloodied Moammar Gadhafi being beaten, and then, apparently dead, dragged through the street on Thursday. CNN said its policy is to use graphic clips "sparingly," and in this case it wanted to "make the editorial point that Gadhafi appears dead." NBC News said it was trying to provide the "most accurate reports possible without crossing a line into offensive or unnecessarily graphic material." Was the disturbing video — shot by a rebel with his cellphone — really essential to telling the story?
The images were too graphic — they distorted the facts: "It's good to show the reality of war," says Steven Baxter at New Statesman, "but there's something unsettling about our delight in graphic pictures of the dead dictator." No matter how vile a man Gadhafi was, "there's something primeval almost, something rather unsettling, about the trophy-like nature of Gaddafi's corpse." The editors who aired the videos, and the viewers who watched, might be "delighting in the grisly episode a little too much."
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