Horror killing film footage too graphic for US

Macabre images of four American contractors killed in Iraq filled television screens worldwide but were largely shunned by American television that deemed them too graphic.

Network and cable newscasts planned judicious use of the video, which included images of the victims’ charred bodies dragged through the street and two of them hanging from a bridge.

“We’ve had similar discussions throughout the war” in how to handle such raw footage, said Steve Capus, executive producer of NBC Nightly News.

“In this case, it is very disturbing. It’s awful. Quite honestly, it doesn’t need to be seen in full in order to convey the horrors of this despicable act,” Capus said.

Fox News Channel limited its images to shots of the burning vehicles in which the civilian contractors to the US government had been riding – and to shots of joyous crowds in Fallujah.

“We have no plans to show more graphic footage,” said Bill Shine, Fox’s vice president of production. “We made the call that it was too graphic in nature to put on our air.”

What CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer called “a day of horror”, in which five US soldiers were also killed, was largely described rather then seen on the cable news channel.

But CNN, which said it initially limited images to give authorities time to inform next of kin, ventured further on its evening broadcast.

“There is much more we will not show, but we believe some images are necessary to fully illustrate the extent of the violence,” CNN correspondent Walter Rodgers said from Iraq.

A few seconds of video of two burned bodies dangling from the bridge were shown, preceded by a viewer advisory.

CBS had planned to use some of the graphic footage on its Evening News, according to executive producer Jim Murphy, but decided against it by airtime. Anchor Dan Rather signed on by saying the images were too gruesome even for grown-up eyes.

Both the Pentagon and the White House said they did not ask any media outlets to suppress use of the Fallujah video.