By James L. Lambert
November 30, 2004

(AgapePress) - For weeks it was reported that CBS possessed pictures of prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib, a former pre-war Saddam Hussein-run prison facility outside of Baghdad in Iraq. Thanks to the CBS initial release, Al Jazeera repeatedly flashed throughout the Arab world images of nude Iraqi men in front of their male and female captors. Political opponents of the Bush administration immediately called for an investigation of these so-called abuses. The story was featured non-stop on TV from morning news shows on CBS, NBC, CNN and ABC, to afternoon cable news programs, to prime-time evening news.

For weeks the controversy played in the domestic and worldwide press. It was featured prominently in leading newspapers both nationally and regionally. The story captured headlines throughout the world. This media exposure continued to occur, despite new stories of the capture and beheadings of several American workers in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The media was reluctant to show these beheadings because of their "graphic nature." Oftentimes the print media would not even mention these stories on the front pages. Apparently, it was not deemed newsworthy by their liberal editors. Yet newspapers like USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications were quick to run page-one "analysis" (code word for editorials) criticizing America and the military for the Abu Ghraib fiasco. The media blamed the serious mistakes of a handful of army personnel on the military and America, in general. The world heard -- and took note.

Now, several months later, our troops are facing the task of capturing the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah. In the course of some of the hardest street-to-street fighting that Americans have seen since Vietnam, NBC released a tape of a U.S. soldier who killed a wounded insurgent held up in a Iraqi mosque.

NBC released the tape of this episode. Immediately it played across the Arab world. Again, U.S. military commanders and their personnel were put at risk for revenge.

Opponents of the administration used this tape to portray cruelty in the American effort. They accused the soldier of a "war crime" without reporting on the common practice of suicide bombers pretending to be wounded while holding a grenade.

The media did not inform us of the buildings in Fallujah rigged with suicide bombs, and other life-threatening situations our brave troops continue to face. We now hear later that work by this same NBC cameraman (Jeffrey Site) has been featured -- with his permission -- on an anti-war website.

Sadly, NBC released Site's footage to the world media. NBC's film, like the CBS footage from Abu Ghraib, was used by the Arab media to inflame the Muslim world, thus increasing the threat to U.S. troops in Iraq.

While both sets of footage should not be ignored, the media should have shown restraint and common sense in dealing with these matters. I believe that both news agencies should have turned over the footage to the military pending thorough investigations and let them hold whatever parties accountable for their actions within military code.

Instead NBC, CBS, and other news agency culprits featured these pictures without counting the cost to those who fight for the freedoms our media take so easily for granted.