Saddam Hussein's execution is changing the face of the media

By Julian Sudre

The fall of a dictator made public through a you tube generation has exacerbated many a nation across the globe; and the ignominious broadcasting of the video and the photos published in the newspapers spur me into thinking that humanity retains the stain of sensationalism that degrades journalism and our own self-esteem.

The execution of Saddam Hussein was ill-timed with the holiest day of the Muslim year; many Arab Muslims said that the hanging was provocatively timed with the feast of Eid al-Adha and would elicit increased violence in Iraq.

Obviously the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is taking a lot of flack for pressuring the White House to give its assent over the hanging of the former dictator. Now he can't wait to finish his tenure at the head of the Iraqi Government.
The result has become a morass of divergent views over the execution -- and the death penalty -- since an across-the-board insurgency may trigger a sweeping pandemonium in the Middle East. Sectarian and ethnic violence will be mostly taking place in doomed Baghdad for some time yet.

The culmination has had a vicious and corrupt flavour due to the arrest of Iraqi guards who used their mobile phones to film the grisly episode.
The question remains how they managed to have their phone on the premises as they were seized by american security prior to entering the gallows room.

As a result, a formidable media wave came crashing down to capture the goverment-approved video clip of the execution and to debate over the mobile phone illegal film that injected much convulsion everywhere.

Should not such pictures simply and squarely be banned for the sake of propriety and civilities until the very end?

I am afraid to observe a deliberate detoriation of the media today as our society is inured to crass reporting and journalism has deviated from the tracks of proper interpretation of current affairs.

Not only democracy should have bounderies to separate how to view the news from a particular angle instead of throwing glaring light on to abominable deeds such as publishing an execution but also impose a more strigent editing before we accept unwittingly the projection of news-writing with increasing greed.

Again decisions we may take attract intense attention from the media but the spiralling descent into misjudgement would prove catastrophic relatively soon if we don't re-establish our standards.
We are shifting our attention towards a form of Hollywoodian reporting and the mediation of such stories ensure that we know in advance when a scoop becomes a blockbuster, bar the moral ethics that we were supposed to appreciate.

In the meantime, when a former dictator fall from graces, we will never forget that Saddam Hussein has gained the status of martyr after his death and will be marked forever with sensationalism and money- grubbing media on his head.