It's amazing how many things we get to see with our own eyes.  It wasn't too long ago, that over the course of an average person's life, people never saw anything much beyond 25 miles from where they were born. Today we see nearly everything on the planet and with the Mars landing earlier this year, we get high resolution images from other planets too.

 

I've spent much of my life enjoying photography and even flirted with a career as a journalist. I think we are privileged to live in a time when we can see so much of the world, but ultimately I may conclude it is little more than a curse.

 

The images of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot; the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan; and the second plane into the World Trade Center were all captured by the camera lens.  I bet that as your eyes pass over these words you can see these same images in your head.  They are certainly burned into my memory.

 

The coverage of the beheading of American Nick Berg this week has suppressed the images. I'm not advocating that the video is appropriate for the evening news, but was fascinated that no article mentioned the name of the web site that published it. As news consumers we were not given the option to see the video if we so chose. The articles seem to uniformly identify a "militant Al Qaeda website" without publishing the address. Shouldn't they have listed the web site as a simple reference for the report? Wouldn't they want to give any reader who wished access to the video the chance to view it on their own? Isn't it important for people to see this video to really understand the people we're fighting?

 

All of these questions went unanswered in my head.  I read a bunch of articles and yet still felt I needed to see the video.  Not sure why.  I heard a radio talk host say that he viewed the video, but when callers asked how they could see it he simply said "you shouldn't see it" and refused to provide any web addresses to the audience.

 

It wasn't easy to find, but I found it.  Now, I wish I hadn't. These images are forever burn into my memory.  I thought I needed to see this, but I didn't  I'm not sure what I learned about the issue or myself, but I guess I have a renewed confidence in the press corps.  If they uniformly cover it up, it's probably a good thing.