Sunday, January 29, 2006
The Associated Press: Smothering the voice of the victim
There's no other way to put it.
Saddam Hussein gets the dramatic photo. He gets top billing. His brother gets fellative press in the top few graphs for being dragged out of the courtroom after calling the court "the daughter of a whore."
Even the arguments of Ramsey Clark and other members of Saddam's defense team get prominent billing.
And whose small voice is banished to the bottom quarter of the article? Those of Saddam's victims:
Remember.
Splash, out
Jason
Update: CNN squelches the victims' voices altogether. To CNN, they are all but nonexistent. What's their excuse for not reporting the horrors of Saddam's regime this time?
Saddam Hussein gets the dramatic photo. He gets top billing. His brother gets fellative press in the top few graphs for being dragged out of the courtroom after calling the court "the daughter of a whore."
Even the arguments of Ramsey Clark and other members of Saddam's defense team get prominent billing.
And whose small voice is banished to the bottom quarter of the article? Those of Saddam's victims:
When testimony began, the first witness told the court she was arrested several days after the 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam. She said her interrogators removed her Islamic headscarf and gave her electric shocks to her head.
"I thought my eyes would pop out," she said. Sixteen other members of her family also were arrested, and seven of them were killed in detention - including her husband, who she said was tortured.
She said two of the defendants remaining in the courtroom - Ali Dayih Ali and Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid - were among those who arrested her. The two defendants denied the accusation.
A second woman gave similar testimony Sunday, saying she saw women tortured after she was detained. "I have seen things that I could not have believed. Children crying and mothers tortured. I've seen a blind girl crying while she was being tortured," she said, sobbing.
Remember.
Splash, out
Jason
Update: CNN squelches the victims' voices altogether. To CNN, they are all but nonexistent. What's their excuse for not reporting the horrors of Saddam's regime this time?
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