Should video of the POWs be shown?

I’m watching the Central Command press conference, held in Doha, Qatar, on CNN where U.S. officials confirmed that 12 Army troops have been taken prisoners of war and fewer than 10 were killed in a fake surrender by Iraqi forces.

At the press conference, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid said that putting captured soldiers on television is a “clear violation of the Geneva Convention.” Does that make sense, given that the Geneva Convention was ratified in 1950, at the very birth of television, and makes no mention of television?

I’m going to guess that, at least at this point, U.S. media outlets won’t television the video of the captured troops taped by Iraqi forces and airing on al-Jazeera, if for no other reason than it’s uncertain if the soldiers’ relatives have been informed yet and because of the propaganda value to Saddam’s regime.

The question is, has anyone captured the footage from al-Jazeera and posted it on the Web yet? And a second question: When it is posted, would it be ethical for online news organizations to point to it if the network news outlets won’t air it?

Michael Wolff, the New York magazine columnist is there, and the general just told him he finds it “disgusting” that any media outlet would air video of the captured servicemen. Gotta say Michael looked a little out of place, since he was writing about NBC celebs just a few days ago.

Later: I’ve now seen a half dozen broadcast journalists saying they’ve seen the Iraqi state TV footage of the captured servicemen. We’ve seen televised video of captured Americans in Iran, in Lebanon and in other countries over the years. The video footage here will undoubtedly be shown everywhere in the world — except the United State. I suspect that the general’s comments were designed with that end in mind.

Do I think that the news media act appropriately by not showing us video footage of captured servicemen under duress? Absolutely. They should be making those judgments about what to broadcast — that’s their job.

Should we collectively decide not to provide links to the video on the Web? That’s a different matter. A few sites have posted the footage — and been overwhelmed by the hits on their servers. Beamz, for example, writes:

I need to pull the POW video shortly because of bandwidth consumption. I may put it back up at a later date.

Here are some mirrors:

http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~spiritu/pow2.rm
http://www.jomiha.com/blog/archives/000072.html
http://turtopia.org/pow2.ram

None of these have worked for me so far in Windows Media Player 9. I’m in no hurry to see this in any event. Perhaps the viewing will be in a happier context, if they’re soon released.

Still later: OK, I’ve now seen the video, less than 2 minutes long, after downloading the Real One Player (one of the apps I hadn’t re-downloaded after my hard drive problems last month). I don’t see any obvious evidence that the POWs have been mistreated. And no one is being forced to make anti-American statements against their will — they’re being asked who they are and why they’re fighting in Iraq.

What’s disturbing are the awful circumstances these servicemen and one servicewoman find themselves in.

We’ll see what other journalists say, but I see no reason why news organizations and indie news sites shouldn’t link to these newsworthy video snippets as long as the proper warnings and context are provided to users. Expect lots more commentary on the subject in the blogosphere in the coming days.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.