Associated Press
Published on 5/3/2004
Excerpt:
Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said there should be an “exceptional principle and argument” to justify withholding news of such magnitude.
“You’d have to be convinced that these other American lives are truly on the line,” he said. “I would want to have a very specific and short time period (to withhold the news). If CBS believes it was justified, to hold back two weeks seems like an awful long time. Perhaps a day or two. But two weeks is a long time, particularly with the nature of the allegations in the video.”
Steele said he was troubled that CBS did not disclose during the show that the images had been withheld. “This is very important,” Steele said. “There should have been a disclosure at the time of the broadcast.” …
Steele pointed out that Iraqi prisoners could have been at risk, too.
“Allegations of this nature, the violation of the rights of the enemy prisoners, should not be taken lightly in the slightest,” he said. “It’s possible that their lives could be in jeopardy as well. … it’s not impossible to consider that at least their health, if not their lives, were at risk.”
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