Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was irked when Al-Jazeera showed 'humiliating' footage of U.S. POWs.
Qatar-based satellite networks Al-Jazeera showed an unidentified U.S. prisoner of war interviewed by Iraqi TV.
WASHINGTON -- For U.S. news networks, the decision whether to air gruesome footage of dead American servicemen in an Iraqi morgue revealed the complexities emerging as the U.S. war on Iraq intensifies.
The footage in question was taped by Iraqi television and aired in full by the 24-hour Arabic news channel Al Jazeera. Part of the tape showed several of the POWs dead, while another portion showed additional POWs being interrogated.
In Washington, the Pentagon asked the nets to hold off airing the tape until the family members had been notified. CBS, the first to air a clip of the tape in the morning, was initially told that it was okay to show the interrogations, as long as the face was blurred.
Later, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke reversed the decision and asked the nets to hold off.
By then, though, CNN had already aired a still-shot of the morgue, saying the bodies in the picture were unidentifiable.
"It's hard for me to look at it from a level of compassion that news orgs would make a business decision prior to giving the command channels the opportunity to notify families," said Lt. Cmdr. Tim Blair, a Pentagon spokesman.
Al Jazeera came under attack by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who appeared on several Sunday ayem news shows. Rumsfeld said it was a breach of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war to show "humiliating" footage of the U.S. military captives.
Rumsfeld also cautioned U.S. news nets against showing the tape, a request later transmitted via email to the networks.
By late afternoon, the Pentagon appeared to strike a balance with the news media, indicating that it would be okay to air obscured, still shots. Almost all the nets went ahead and showed a still shot of the morgue.
"After much reflection and consultation, Fox News Channel has decided to show the picture of the dead American soldiers, whose images were shown earlier today on Iraqi Television. The image does not allow identification of individual soldiers. The airing of this still picture does not violate any standing request from the Pentagon," the net said in a statement.
During the first 48 hours of the war, the footage provided by the scores of TV correspondents embedded by the Pentagon with U.S. troops was largely friendly to Washington's aim.
More independent turn
Things, however, changed over the weekend. Saturday night, CBS correspondent Mark Strassman reported from Kuwait that a U.S. soldier had attacked his tent compound with three hand grenades and gun fire, killing one soldier and seriously wounding others.
Later, news broke that a U.S. Patriot missile had mistakenly brought down a British jet fighter. Again, the story was reported by an embedded journalist.
"Over the weekend, it became very clear that the stories of the embeds are very clearly different than the first week or so," one news network exec said.
The Pentagon said Sunday it has not had objections to any stories that have been filed by the embedded reporters. The tape aired on Al Jazeera was another matter, considering that next-of-kin had yet to be notified.
"It's important not to sanitize images of war. It's another thing to pump those images on the screen the second they become available," a network exec said. "We do need to perform an editorial function."
Journalists reporting independently in Iraq are facing grave danger. Over the weekend, two Australian TV journalists were killed in northern Iraq. In southern Iraq, ITN journalist Terry Lloyd was killed.
Prior to the war's commencement, networks had predicted that they would provide continuous, commercial-free news coverage for the first two or three days of the conflict. Broadcast nets subsequently realized that the war didn't need the kind of round-the-clock coverage that the terrorist attack of 9/11 brought.
Over much of the weekend, the cable news nets stuck with the war story wall-to-wall without commercials, while the broadcast nets broke away for some sports and entertainment programming.
Fox News Channel outdrew cable net rivals CNN and MSNBC on Thursday, the first full day of the war. Fox averaged 4.1 million viewers Thursday, while CNN had 3.7 million and MSNBC 1.6 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The war story was certainly a boon to the all-day averages for the news cablers, as well. With FNC (4.39 million) and CNN (3.91 million) leading the way, the four newsies combined for 10.4 million viewers in the 24 hours beginning Thursday at 6 a.m. ET -- nearly four times the 2.7 million that they had drawn the previous Thursday.
On the broadcast side, NBC -- behind its two-hour comedy block and a special "Dateline" at 10 -- won the night with an aud of roughly 13.6 million. Net also did well on both Friday (9.6 million) and Saturday (9.7 million) with primetime lineups that consisted of a commercial-free "Dateline" at 8 and ad-supported repeats of the "Law & Order" franchise from 9 to 11; the Peacock won both nights.
ABC was the second most-watched net on Thursday (10.8 million, much better than usual) and Friday (8.6 million) with three hours of commercial-free "sustained" war coverage that will not count toward the net's Nielsen averages. On Saturday, the Alphabet opted for a regularly skedded repeat of movie "Good Will Hunting."
Fox was fourth on Friday in overall audience with its regular drama lineup (5.9 million, up nicely week-to-week), and second Saturday (7.7 million, down slightly week-to-week) with "Cops" and "America Most Wanted."
CBS handed off the first half of Thursday's NCAA men's basketball tourney coverage to ESPN before picking up the action in primetime. The Eye's first window of games (7-10 p.m. ET) averaged 7.6 million viewers, down about 20% year-to-year.
CBS also aired basketball as scheduled on Friday and Saturday, with ratings for the primetime action on these nights also down roughly 20% vs. last year.
(Rick Kissell in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)
Contact Pamela McClintock at
pamela.mcclintock@variety.com