Saddam execution video draws criticism

By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer, January 3

Grainy cell phone video of Saddam Hussein's execution triggered international criticism Tuesday, with Britain's deputy prime minister calling the leaked images "unacceptable" and the Vatican decrying the footage as a "spectacle" violating human rights.

Meanwhile, the Italian government pushed for a U.N. moratorium on the death penalty, Cuba called the execution "an illegal act," and Sunnis in Iraq took to the streets in mainly peaceful demonstrations across the country.

The unofficial video showed a scene that stopped just short of pandemonium, during which one person is heard shouting "To hell!" at the deposed president and Saddam is heard exchanging insults with his executioners. The inflammatory footage also showed Saddam plummeting through the gallows trapdoor and dangling in death.

The grainy video appeared on the Internet and Al-Jazeera television late Saturday. On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an investigation into the execution to try to uncover who taunted the former dictator, and who leaked the cell phone footage.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work when he failed to state the U.N.'s official stance opposing capital punishment and said it should be a decision of individual countries.

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty, although Ban's spokeswoman said there was no change in policy.

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said those who leaked the footage should be condemned.

"I think the manner was quite deplorable really. I don't think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment," Prescott said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

The Holy See's daily, L'Osservatore Romano, lamented that "making a spectacle" of the execution had turned capital punishment into "an expression of political hubris."

The execution "represented, for the ways in which it happened and for the media attention it received, another example of the violation of the most basic rights of man," L'Osservatore wrote.

The office of Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Italy would seek the support of other countries that oppose capital punishment to put the issue of a moratorium to the U.N. General Assembly. Italy and all other European Union countries ban capital punishment.

Italy, which is one of the rotating members of the U.N. Security Council, has lobbied unsuccessfully for U.N. action against the death penalty.

On Monday, a crowd of Sunni mourners in Samarra marched to a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine, the Golden Dome, and were allowed by guards and police to enter the holy place carrying a mock coffin and photos of the former dictator.

The shrine was bombed by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, an attack that triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites.

Communist Cuba, which allows capital punishment, called Saddam's execution "an illegal act in a country that has been driven toward an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives."

The Foreign Ministry statement Monday said the island nation "has a moral duty to express its point of view about the assassination committed by the occupying power."

The U.S. military had held Saddam since capturing him in December 2003 but turned him over to the Iraqi government for his execution.

Confronted with a second, unofficial and more graphic video account of the moments leading up to the execution of Saddam Hussein, and the hanging itself, executives at television news organizations made a series of what one executive, President Steve Capus of NBC News, called “delicate editorial decisions” about what they would put on the air on Saturday night and Sunday to augment the first pictures of the execution.

The new video, almost certainly shot by a cellphone camera by one of the guards or witnesses at the execution, includes exchanges between Mr. Hussein and either the witnesses or guards leading up to the moment when the trapdoor opens and he falls. 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. Some prominent sites, like Google’s video site and the conservative blog Littlegreenfootballs.com, have posted the complete cellphone coverage of the execution, including the moment Mr. Hussein falls from view.

Fox News and CNN ran the cellphone video — freezing on Mr. Hussein’s face before the final moment — most of the day on Sunday. Fox was the first to use the video on Saturday evening, after the Arab-language channel Al Jazeera aired it. ABC ran some of the video starting in its late newscasts Saturday night.

David Rhodes, the vice president for news at Fox News, said one reason the network chose to transmit the new video was that it contained the verbal exchanges between Mr. Hussein and those about to put him to death. Most television news executives interviewed Sunday said these hostile exchanges made the new video newsworthy. Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic operations, said the flavor of sectarianism cinched the decision. “It really was a microcosm of the various strains in Iraqi society at the moment,” he said.

Saddam execution images shown on TV, Web

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television WriterSun Dec 31, 5:31 AM ET

Although Iraqi authorities released no video of Saddam Hussein's execution, crude images of the hanging emerged Saturday on the Internet, and some TV networks used portions leading up to the trap door opening.

The video, apparently taken by a cell phone, clearly showed Saddam falling to his death and briefly swinging on a rope, his neck grotesquely bent. But none of the networks showed those images.

Earlier in the day, Iraqi state television broadcast video of men in black ski masks loosely placing the noose around Saddam's neck. Those images were picked up and repeated by American television networks.

The cell phone video of the execution, taken from in front of the gallows, emerged after 4 p.m. EST. The Al-Jazeera satellite network ran an abridged version that was picked up in the United States by Fox News Channel.

ABC News may use brief portions of the new video showing Saddam standing in his last moments alive, said Bob Murphy, the network's senior vice president.

"It's a different angle on the same event," he said. "It has much more audio and ambient sound. They're clearly taunting him. It's a much more hostile environment than you get from watching the video this morning. The earlier video makes it seem much more passive and serene than it actually was."

The source of the execution video is not clear. It shows the potential of cell phone video as a powerful new source for news organizations, Murphy said. Yet in this case, it also indicates the lack of control authorities had over if people in the audience were freely allowed to take pictures, he said.

Network executives initially thought they might make it through the day without any tough calls. The first video of Saddam shortly before his execution became available about 4 a.m. EST. It was shown by all of the American news networks.

"Everyone was anticipating we would have a difficult decision to make," said David Rhodes, Fox vice president of news. "But when you consider what we and everyone else saw coming in, the pictures were fairly dramatic, but there was nothing we had to do" before televising it, he said.

Networks took differing approaches to showing Saddam's body.

Fox ran side-by-side pictures of Saddam, one a file photo labeled "Alive" and the other a blurry still photo after the execution marked "Dead."

Another video distributed early Saturday on state-run television seemed to come from a cell phone and depicted Saddam in a white shroud, his neck turned at an unnatural angle. The shroud and part of his neck contained what appeared to be blood stains.

NBC News, both on the Saturday "Today" show and on the MSNBC cable channel until about midday, did not show Saddam's body. NBC News President Steve Capus then approved the use of one still photo of Saddam's body.

"I didn't want them to rush into it," Capus said. "I wanted them to be cautious. I didn't think there was anything to be gained by being first with the pictures of the body."

CBS News aired four separate images of Saddam's body on "The Early Show." ABC, keeping in mind the hour of the day, decided to show only a still picture of the body, one without the blood stains.

"We decided to isolate a freeze frame that clearly identified it was him but didn't dwell on it and didn't have some of the more macabre aspects of his head," Murphy said.

Of course American television was going to show Saddam Hussein’s execution. In a medium that feeds on immediacy, it was just a question of not having to wait too long to see it. And the coverage of the Iraqi dictator’s last moments turned out to be an enervating, overnight death watch.

When the first images of the hanging began trickling onto CNN and other cable news shows just before 4 a.m., the death looked oddly casual. Mr. Hussein, who refused a hood, wore a black overcoat and a calm, bland expression that made him look almost like a visiting dignitary on a factory tour.

Some news reports said the condemned man shouted “Allah-u akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” on the gallows, but the camera showed Mr. Hussein being escorted by masked men into a shabby room, seemingly listening in a considering way as one of the guards gestured to his own neck as if to explain how the process works. The man slipped a black scarf around Mr. Hussein’s neck, then the noose, and then the camera stopped.

It took another few hours for Fox, MSNBC and CNN to transmit Iraqi television’s record of the aftermath: grainy, jumpy shots, possibly taken by a cellphone camera, of Mr. Hussein’s body, lying wrapped in a sheet, his face uncovered and his neck, as a Fox anchor put it, “horribly twisted.”

Throughout the night, cable news anchors repeatedly assured viewers that for deep-rooted cultural reasons, the Iraqi public would need to see a videotape of Saddam Hussein’s execution — as if implying that left to their own devices, the anchors would prefer to just flash a photocopy of the death certificate.

For its own cultural reasons, American television needed to paint morbid curiosity and the competitiveness of live television as a duty executed soberly and reluctantly. “This need to show pictures, some of which are very gruesome, frankly, must be important” for the Iraqi government, the CNN overnight anchor, Stephen Frazier, told Ryan Chilcote, as the close-ups of Mr. Hussein’s body crossed the screen. Mr. Frazier then asked the reporter to explain the “apparent bruising” on the dead man’s face.

The Saturday morning shows were more subdued, trying to finesse the jarring contrast between scenes of American well-wishers lined up outside a church in Palm Desert, Calif., to pay their respects to former President Gerald R. Ford, and Iraqis dancing in the streets of Sadr City in Iraq — and Dearborn, Mich. — to celebrate Mr. Hussein’s inglorious execution.

The networks mostly chose not to begin the day with the most lurid shots. On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Terry McCarthy, a Baghdad-based reporter, said the network was not showing Iraqi images of Mr. Hussein’s body because “we think they are a little too graphic to show on television.”

The news that Mr. Hussein was indeed dead came late on Friday night, and anticlimactically after hour upon hour of creepy music, blood-colored graphics and montages of Mr. Hussein’s most infamous moments, particularly his spider hole capture in 2003, when an American military camera recorded a hairy, befuddled Mr. Hussein being prodded and poked like a vagrant being searched for lice.

As the deadline loomed, and commentators filled time with pronouncements like “the clock is ticking on Saddam Hussein,” even on-air personalities looked restless. After devoting his entire hour on CNN to the impending hanging, Larry King asked, “Is there something ghoulish about this?” Mr. King looked a little let down when he had to sign off before the execution, promising viewers, “It is really imminent now.”

Shortly after 10 p.m., anchors announced that Iraqi news organizations were declaring Mr. Hussein dead, but there were no live images or sound bites to bolster those bulletins. Baghdad was still asleep, so reporters who stayed up all night to record the moment could not deliver an instant reaction.

CNN got around it by showing tape of Iraqi-Americans holding a rowdy outdoor demonstration in Dearborn, Mich. Iraqi state television apparently also felt the need to punctuate execution images with celebratory scenes: CNN reported that Iraqi state television was also showing images of Iraqi-Americans cheering in Dearborn. Those turned out to be images taken from the CNN signal.

Before the first pictures arrived, some anchors fretted on air about whether they could be shown. CNN’s Anderson Cooper seemed most worried about the content, telling viewers that a decision over how much to show would be made “at the highest levels” of CNN. But Iraqi television did not show Mr. Hussein’s death throes on Friday, so the ethical quandry was somewhat muted.

Fox was much less squeamish, pumping up the Friday night vigil with graphics that promised “The end is near!” and “Date with Death” and urging viewers to stay tuned to Fox News.

All the networks tried to prepare viewers with long biographies of Mr. Hussein and his many crimes. CNN put together a report on the history of toppled leaders’ executions, from Mussolini in 1945 to the deposed Afghan president, Najibullah, who was hanged from a Kabul traffic post by the Taliban in 1996. CNN even interviewed a forensic scientist who used a plastic medical school dummy, a rope wrapped around its neck, to explain that asphyxiation can be painless and quick.

But when the pictures arrived, there was no getting around the raw barbarity of the moment. On New York’s ABC “Eyewitness News,” the morning anchor, Michelle Charlesworth, turned to Jim Dolan and said, “Remind us of what kind of monster this man was.”

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer 12/30/-6

The video, apparently taken by a cell phone, clearly showed Saddam falling to his death and briefly swinging on a rope, his neck grotesquely bent. But none of the networks showed those images.

ABC News may use brief portions of the new video showing Saddam standing in his last moments alive, said Bob Murphy, the network's senior vice president.

Networks took differing approaches to showing Saddam's body.

Fox ran side-by-side pictures of Saddam, one a file photo labeled "Alive" and the other a blurry still photo after the execution marked "Dead."

"I didn't want them to rush into it," Capus said. "I wanted them to be cautious. I didn't think there was anything to be gained by being first with the pictures of the body."

CBS News aired four separate images of Saddam's body on "The Early Show." ABC, keeping in mind the hour of the day, decided to show only a still picture of the body, one without the blood stains.

"We decided to isolate a freeze frame that clearly identified it was him but didn't dwell on it and didn't have some of the more macabre aspects of his head," Murphy said.

December 30, 2006

How Much Should Be Shown of a Hanging? Network Executives Wonder and Wait

By BILL CARTER (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/business/media/30netw.html

In the hours before the hanging of Saddam Hussein television news executives were thrown into hurried consultations yesterday over how to handle any images of his execution that might be released.

Though there was some question as to whether any video images would be issued any time soon, the network news divisions at ABC and CBS said that should the video become available, some visual documentation of Mr. Hussein’s death might be broadcast, but no overly graphic images, and certainly not the complete execution.

NBC News, however, indicated it might go further than its competitors. Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said the network might show “a wide shot of Saddam hanging.” He said NBC would make its decision based on questions of taste and history.

“I think it might be appropriate at some point to see an image of Saddam after he is hanged,” Mr. Capus said, citing previous historic images of dictators who had been killed. “I think about that iconic image of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, lying literally in the gutter. I want to do this with a measure of taste, but I don’t want to stand in the way of history.”

The cable channels CNN and Fox News were less definitive about what limits they might impose on any images of Mr. Hussein dead, saying they would decide what to display after they saw what was available. (MSNBC, the cable channel owned by NBC, will follow the policies of NBC News.)

None of this means that the complete hanging, if the Iraqi authorities videotaped it, will be unavailable. Executives throughout the television news business said they fully expected such images to turn up at least on Web sites.

“Somehow it will get out,” said Paul Friedman, the vice president of CBS News. “That video is going to be available somewhere on some channel or some site.” Mr. Friedman said he had met with the CBS News staff yesterday and had told them, “There will be a lot of pressure to use the pictures” of the actual hanging. But, he added, “CBS will not show it, no matter what.”

Bob Murphy, the senior vice president of ABC News, said, “I suspect there will be some form of video released that will confirm the death for the Iraqi people.”

ABC will “fulfill our obligations as journalists in documenting the event,” he said. But he emphasized: “We will absolutely not go too far in showing graphic images. Taste and propriety are the two key guidelines.”

Mr. Murphy also stressed that ABC News would not allow its Web site, ABCNews.com, to show anything more than what was permitted on television. “The decision will be for all of ABC News,” he said. “What is excluded for ABC News on television will be excluded for all ABC News outlets.”

Mr. Friedman said editors from CBS’s site, CBSNews.com, had also been told that they would be under the same restrictions as the broadcast network. Mr. Capus also said the choices of the MSNBC.com Web site would be governed by what the network decided.

David Rhodes, the vice president of news for the leading all-news cable network, the Fox News Channel, said questions of what the network might show were “still hypothetical at this point.”

Of what the channel might eventually show, he said, “If you could tell me exactly what we were going to get, I could give you an answer.”

As to whether the channel’s Web site, FoxNews.com, might be permitted to show more images than what appeared on television, Mr. Rhodes said, “We haven’t had the discussion yet about whether we should be doing anything different on the Web site.”

CNN released only a statement saying, “We will make our final call once we see what the Iraqi government releases.”

Most of the news outlets cited decisions they had made in the aftermath of the killing of the two sons of Mr. Hussein by United States troops. Mr. Murphy of ABC said the network had broadcast some still shots of the faces of the dead men but had excluded graphic video that showed multiple wounds.

A spokeswoman for CNN, Laurie Goldberg, noted that in the case of the sons, many questions were raised about their identities, and so more images were shown to make comparisons with previous pictures taken of the men.

Still unclear yesterday was what other news and video outlets might do if they gained access to video images of the hanging. Representatives for the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera did not respond to telephone calls or e-mail messages. Jennifer Nielsen, the marketing manager for YouTube, said that that popular video Web site would not comment on videos it had not yet seen. In general, the site’s policy is to prohibit content that is deemed inappropriate by its users.

News media mull hanging coverage

Iowa and national news outlets vary on what they are willing to show.

By MELISSA WALKER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

December 30, 2006

Des Moines-area television stations did not plan to show Saddam Hussein's hanging or his dead body, although station officials said they might let viewers see the former Iraqi dictator before the execution, right up until the rope went around his neck.

"We broadcast into people's homes at dinner time," said Dana Cardin, assistant news director for KCCI, a CBS affiliate. "We're not going to put on jarring video that will be upsetting to families."

The Des Moines Register's coverage depended on the photographs available.

Images from the hanging wouldn't be published unless something unexpected happened that readers would only understand by seeing them, Editor Carolyn Washburn said.

"I have been willing to publish disturbing death photos if they were important to understanding the news - the photo of the soldier dragged through the streets of Mogadishu or the soldiers burned and hung from the bridge in Fallujah," she said. "I felt that readers really couldn't understand the extreme nature of the situation without seeing the worst of what had happened.

"In this case, the news of Saddam's hanging is not a surprise."

The Cedar Rapids Gazette planned to publish at least some photos from the execution, Editor Mark Bowden said.

Bowden said if the image of Saddam's corpse was similar to those made public after his sons were killed in the early stages of the war - the images appeared inside the paper - it is likely the same decision would result.

Saul Shapiro, editor of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, said his newspaper won't publish images from the execution or show Saddam's dead body.

"We don't run pictures of bullet-ridden bodies," he said. "I don't think people want to wake up to a photo of a corpse on the front page. I think they can use their imagination."

ABC, CBS and NBC will not broadcast the full execution. Executives of CNN and Fox News Channel had not made the decision Friday, according to published reports.

"I don't show dead bodies, and if you do see it, it's in the context of war stories," said Scott Frederick, news director of WOI, the Des Moines-area ABC affiliate. "I don't think there's a need for it. We can explain it just as well as showing the video of it."

Michelle Boozell, 26, of Des Moines said the execution images would be on the Internet, so they didn't need to be offered by national and local media outlets.

"I don't think they should show it on TV," she said. "I think it's gruesome. I'm against the death penalty, so that probably influences my opinion."

David Wright, a Drake University associate professor of electronic media, said he expected Saddam's execution video to show up on the Internet. "I think there's news value, so I would be surprised if the newspapers did not show a picture of it," Wright said.

Reporter Melissa Walker can be reached at (515) 284-8451 or mewalker@dmreg.com

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/ap_en_tv/saddam_media

By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer Sat Dec 30, 12:50 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - TV news channels played a tense waiting game Friday as they ticked off the final hours of

Saddam Hussein's life, replaying scenes from the former Iraqi dictator's reign as they waited for his death.

Saddam's hanging Friday night ended a day of TV reporting fraught with uncertainty and speculation about whether his execution was imminent.

"The situation seems to be one of tremendous flux, but you and your viewers already know that," Feisal al-Istrabadi,

Iraq's deputy ambassador to the

United Nations, said on CNN several hours before Saddam's death.

At about 10:15 p.m. EST, NBC broke into regular programming with a special report announcing Hussein's execution. NBC attributed the news to three "very credible" Arabic language news stations.

A few minutes later, Katie Couric made the announcement for CBS, also breaking into programming.

"Saddam Hussein is dead. We have just received word that the former president of Iraq has been executed. No details yet, but Iraqi authorities said they were planning to videotape the death," Couric said.

She then went to correspondent Randall Pinkston, who said the network was told by one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers that the execution was carried out just before 10 p.m. Eastern time.

ABC issued its report shortly before 10:30 p.m. EST, citing a senior military official in Baghdad.

Reports on cable channels Fox News Channel and CNN cited Arab language news stations.

After Saddam's death, the issue became whether footage, if made available, would be shown.

"American forces across Iraq are bracing for a possible violent reaction to the execution and we should say that NBC News is not going to broadcast videotape of the execution," newscaster Campbell Brown said.

But CNN's Anderson Cooper indicated the door was open.

"We will be bringing those images to you as appropriate," said Cooper. Video and still photos had been taken of the execution but would be reviewed by the channel before airing, he said.

"We won't be showing anything too graphic," Cooper said.

But in the hours after Saddam's death, the story was told in words and old footage. There was brief coverage of members of the Iraq community in Dearborn, Mich., celebrating his execution, but otherwise news channels relied on file film of Saddam and war-torn Iraq.

Before the execution, news executives were reluctant to discuss hypothetically what they might show if video or still pictures were made available. They said they would weigh questions of tastefulness with the need to illustrate an important story.

NBC News will use discretion in what it shows, but people have the right to see proof that Saddam was killed, said Phil Alongi, executive producer, NBC News special events.

"We're not going to do it just for the shock value," Alongi said earlier Friday.

CBS News discussed general guidelines in the days when it became clear that the execution was imminent.

"We need to show Saddam being taken to his execution and we need to show the results of the execution, but we will not see any moving video of him actually being hanged," said Paul Friedman, CBS News executive.

Bob Murphy, ABC News senior vice president, recalled that when Saddam's two sons were killed, his network showed pictures of their faces after death but showed nothing of their bodies.

Several hours after the execution, Murphy said ABC would use its "editorial judgment" in reviewing any footage and deciding whether it was appropriate to air. Based on unconfirmed information, he said, the execution may have been taped in its entirety.

If Iraqi TV viewers were glued to their TV sets, as one channel reported, the broadcast networks apparently felt that the news bulletins would hold U.S. viewers for now: All switched back to regular programming Friday, although ABC followed the story on news magazine "20/20."

MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN stayed with Saddam coverage. Fox's Bill O'Reilly might have taken issue with the broadcast network's brief reports.

Saddam's execution represented a "big moment, much bigger than the press in America is portraying it," O'Reilly said earlier Friday, adding: "It's not at the level of (Osama) bin Laden. Bin Laden would be off the chart, great."

----------------

Hard Choices Over Video of Execution

Saddam execution images shown on TV, Web

An Overnight Death Watch, and Then Images of the Hangman’s Noose

Saddam execution images shown on TV, Web

How Much Should Be Shown of a Hanging? Network Executives Wonder and Wait

News media mull hanging coverage

Iowa and national news outlets vary on what they are willing to show.

December 30, 2006