During the Falkland's War, as the Argentine ship the General Belgrano was sailing AWAY from the Falkland's, the Royal Navy destroyed the the ship with a loss 323 human beings. The Sun newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published one of the most infamous front pages in journalism's history, in which the lives of 323 human beings (some mothers' sons) were dismissed with GOTCHA
Today the Murdoch press in the US - the NEW YORK POST has the same headline GOTCHA about the death of Zarqawi. Let me be clear: this was a mean nasty man, who should rot in hell. But he is some mother's son. And it is at least possible that he was killed after capture, which civilized nations do not do to captives.
When I saw the post today, I almost vomited. For anyone who values life, the death even of an evil person is awful. When he may have been killed against all the law of civilized people, the Murdoch paper is even more awful.
How (and let's not mention Haditha) is a society that will not be disgusted by a such a headline any worse than Zarqawi's?
UPDATE: For some reason this is one of my most visited blog pages. Here is the Sun headline for comparison.
3 comments:
The Argentine Battle Cruiser "Gotcha" was clearly not very tasteful. Especially considering the draftee boys working on the boat were innocents who didn't care about a couple of penguin covered rocks.
The second "Gotcha", however, makes me smile. I don't care about his mother at all.
But some British people said the same about SUN's headline during the Falkland Wars.
Stopping caring about peoples' mothers is what leads to people like Zarqawi.
I'm here late, but i wanna say that was a very good point, Paul. A great example of bad taste in media.
Best
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