Once again, the al Qaeda Times of New Yorkâ„¢ is fulfilling its role as the propaganda machine of terrorists.
Last week, SSG Hector Leija, 27, of Raymondville, TX was killed in action in Iraq. This week the al Qaeda Times of New Yorkâ„¢ decided to post images and a 5 minutes video of the dying Soldier in their fish wrap and on their web site.
In doing so, the embedded reporters deliberately broke rules that they agreed to abide by in order to be embedded as journalists with the US Military.
This story turns my stomach with disgust for the filth at the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — A photograph and videotape of a Texas soldier dying in Iraq published by the New York Times have triggered anger from his relatives and Army colleagues and revived a long-standing debate about which images of war are proper to show.
The journalists involved, Times reporter Damien Cave and Getty Images photographer Robert Nickelsberg, working for the Times, had their status as so-called embedded journalists suspended Tuesday by the Army corps in Baghdad, military officials said, because they violated a signed agreement not to publish photos or video of any wounded soldiers without official consent.
New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira said Tuesday night that the newspaper initially did not contact the family of Army Staff Sgt. Hector Leija about the images because of a specific request from the Army to avoid such a direct contact.
“The Times is extremely sensitive to the loss suffered by families when loved ones are killed in Iraq,” Chira said. “We have tried to write about the inevitable loss with extreme compassion.”
Sorry, Chira, but that is complete and utter bullshit. You do not care about the loss suffered by the family, and you showed absolutley no sensitivity as to their loss. Otherwise you would not have broken your word and published the images and photos.
Does this sound like the family appreciated your warped form of sensitivity?
“Oh God, they shouldn’t have published a picture like that,” Leija’s cousin Tina Guerrero, who had not seen the images but was aghast about them anyway, told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday in Raymondville. She said the images would be especially hurtful to the soldier’s parents, Domingo and Manuela Leija, who have remained in the family’s home on the edge of town. ”It’s going to devastate them,” Guerrero said. ”They’re having enough pain dealing with the death of their son.
As to the exact rules that the reporters violated:
The agreement that journalists are asked to sign as a condition of embedding has 14 rules. Rule 11 covers military casualties: “Names, video, identifiable written/oral description or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service member’s prior written consent.”
The ground rule goes on to say, “In respect for family members, names or images clearly identifying individuals ‘killed in action’ will not be released.”
I think that it is pretty clear they broke those rules.
Unfortunately, there will be no reprecussions for the reporters or editors who decided to violate it. Other than I hope that the US Military removes any other NY Times embeds and permanetly bans them from further embeds. For their own protection — as this story spreads amongst the Soldiers deployed in Iraq, I wouldn’t want to be a NY Times embed
Sorry it’s a bullshit rule. Hundreds of thousands are dying because of our elected officials yet the electorate will never see what is done in their names. We have the most uninformed citizenry in the world when it comes to what our nation does abroad.
Remember, of course, this rule was never applied to the endless video loop of an airline crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, instantly ending the lives of a hundred and leading to the death of a thousand more.
Left by Preston on January 31st, 2007 at 10:38 am