Like Lot’s wife, you have to look.
It is every bit as dreadful as you fear. The three-minute-or-so video of the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl was posted this week on the Web site of a popular and respected newspaper, vastly expanding public access to the horrific images.
While the video had appeared earlier on an obscure site, the decision by Stephen M. Mindich, publisher of the Boston Phoenix (www.bostonphoenix.com), to post a link on his paper’s home page was a watershed moment, raising profound moral questions about the balance between privacy and freedom of information, between voyeurism and the desire to understand the depth of hatred that abounds in the world.
“I’ve been fighting the impulse to click on it,” said Rich Gordon, chair of the New Media program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. “It’s human nature to think about it.”
The inevitable availability of the video of Pearl’s murder instantly renders certain debates moot. CBS News was criticized by many for airing a heavily edited, non-graphic portion of it May 14, but who cares about that now? CBS News executives don’t get to decide anymore who sees the video and how much of it they are allowed to see. Nor do the editors of the Tribune or The New York Times or any other newsgathering organization.
It’s not up to them anymore. It’s up to us: If we want to see it, we can.
Images, no matter how gruesome, belong to everybody now. For good or ill, anything digital is endlessly and indiscriminately up for grabs. While that has been true for some time, perhaps only an extraordinarily controversial and almost mythologized piece of footage — the video made by Pearl’s executioners — could have brought that abstract concept so suddenly down to earth, forcing us to confront its grim, appallingly literal implications.
“It’s past the point of saying we’re entering a new communications world,” Gordon said. “We’re in it. On some level, that scares me. But on another level, I don’t know what the alternative is. We have, for the first time in history, an open publishing medium — one where anybody can, at relatively low cost and with relatively low complexity, make their thoughts and information available to anyone anywhere in the world. That’s incredibly exciting.
“But as with many exciting things related to technology, there’s a dark side as well.”
Dealing with the dark side
The dark side of the Pearl video is easy to imagine — but not easy to watch. A crude piece of anti-American and anti-Semitic political propaganda, it juxtaposes pictures of alleged violence against Muslims with shots of Pearl talking, during which The Wall Street Journal reporter repudiates American foreign policy.
“My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,” Pearl states.
And then, so swiftly that it takes the viewer by surprise, comes what seems to be Pearl’s decapitation. The qualification is necessary because there is no way to independently verify the video.
Pearl’s executioner, who is not seen, then brandishes the severed head for several seconds.
Given the video’s grotesque content, why would the Phoenix, for which Pearl once worked, post a link to it? The Phoenix, after all, is a responsible news organization, an alternative weekly with a circulation of approximately 118,000 that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1994, one of only two alternative weeklies ever to receive journalism’s top honor (the other was The Village Voice).
In Thursday’s edition, the Phoenix published on its editorial page two still images from the video: one of Pearl talking, another of Pearl’s severed head.
In a note to readers on the Phoenix’s site, Mindich calls the video “the single most gruesome, horrible, despicable and horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.” He adds, “The outrage I feel as an American and a Jew is almost indescribable. If there is anything that should galvanize every non-Jew hater in the world — of whatever faith, or not faith — against the perpetrators and supporters of those who committed this unspeakable murder, it should be viewing this video.”
In an interview, Mindich expressed dismay that the U.S. government had apparently taken pains to suppress the video. In fact, he added, the government should have aided widespread dissemination of the video, so that Americans could fully comprehend the murderous virulence of the anti-Semitism among Islamic extremists.
“I don’t understand why our government hasn’t expressed their outrage. I don’t understand why President Bush didn’t get on the air and say, `This is completely intolerable.'”
Had they been able to see the complete video, Mindich believes, Americans would have been devastated — and enlightened.
“America is a country that stops when a little girl falls down a well. Here is a person [Pearl], a Jew — here’s someone people can identify with. This personalizes it, brings it down. When you get to the end of the video and the scroll on the screen says, `If you don’t get out of Muslim land, this scene will be repeated over and over again’ — frankly, America needs to understand this.
“If Daniel Pearl had his choice, he’d want it seen.”
Others disagree. Michael Schudson, a journalism professor at the University of California at San Diego who said he doesn’t intend to see the video, is disturbed by the Phoenix’s link. “Whether this serves the cause of freedom or terrorism more, I have no idea. Journalists restrict the release of information sometimes for good reason — say, withholding the name of victims of rape or minors accused of crime. I don’t think we’ve reached a point where a conscientious journalist has only one choice — publish everything you have, regardless.”
Mindich said he decided to post the video after hearing that a Virginia-based company called ProHosters, which develops and maintains commercial Web sites, had been pressured by the FBI to remove the video from one of its clients’ sites. In a note to visitors to his site, ProHosters President Theodore Hickman wrote that his client, ogrish.com, removed the video after “intimidation” from the FBI.
Hickman, in consultation with the American Civil Liberties Union, then decided to post the video on the ProHosters site because, he wrote, “It should not be hidden or swept under the carpet; it should be available to anyone who chooses to watch it. We have a right to see what terrorism can and will do to our nation, if it is not eradicated at the source. . . . Under the U.S. Constitution all Americans have the right to free speech and freedom of press whether you or I deem it moral or immoral.”
A reason for repression?
Mindich said he received an e-mail copy of the video from a Phoenix writer. “I was stunned. I’m watching him [Pearl] being forced to essentially tell the world that he’s a criminal for being a Jew. Then I heard what the FBI had done and I thought, `This is bizarre. Why is the FBI repressing this information?'”
Brave new journalism
FBI officials, who said in published reports that they sought to squelch the video out of respect for Pearl’s family, has not contacted the Phoenix about removing the link, Mindich said. It will remain indefinitely on the Phoenix site, he added. “I don’t see any reason to take it down.”
Mindich said he was aware of the brave new journalism world that he has helped initiate by instructing his Webmaster to link to the video.
“It was literally an instant from decision to execution. I just thought, `Wow. I can do this immediately.’ I felt empowered.”
Similarly empowered is anyone with a computer and Internet access who can, with the click of a mouse, have instant, non-filtered access to virtually anything.
“We can guess what the impact of that will be,” Gordon said, “but we don’t really know. Yes, America needs to understand that in certain countries in the world we’re hated. But somebody may look at it [the Pearl video] and be inspired to go out and cut somebody’s head off. We have to take the bad with the good.”
