Marines Urinate on Corpses-What do Journalists Show?

The awful images were spread around the internet Wednesday, what appears to be U.S. Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters.  The video is short, 38 seconds, the origin is unknown. The Marines confirm they are investigating, so far nobody is calling the video a fake.

The Washington Post reported:

The Marine Corps said Wednesday that it is investigating the origins of a video on the Internet that purports to show Marines in combat gear urinating on the corpses of three Taliban insurgents.

The brief video, which runs for less than a minute, began circulating on Web sites early Wednesday. It depicts four Marines laughing as they relieve themselves while standing over three prostrate bodies. (The video, which includes graphic images, appears here.)

Here is an UNEDITED GRAPHIC version of the video on “Shock and Awe Entertainment” a website that often posts graphic war images.

ABC News posted a photos protecting the faces of the Marines.

Ethics Questions for Journalists:

-Why is this video news?

-Can you think of reasons to protect the Marines’ identity?

-Should the video be censored so as not show the Marines’ genitals? Would a TV station be in violation of FCC indecency regulations if it showed those images on air?

-Should the faces of the Taliban fighters be protected?

-What worries should journalists have that airing these images will cause more problems for American soldiers?

-How concerned should we be about whether the video is real?

Other coverage:

    1. Panetta Blasts Video of Marines Urinating on Dead

      ABC News‎ – 12 minutes ago
      (apacheclips.com) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday condemned as “utterly deplorable” a video that purports to depict four US Marines urinating on

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  1. Nato condemns US marinesurinating on dead bodies’ – video

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/…/nato-us-marinesurinating-bodies-vide…

    38 minutes ago – Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for Nato’s international security assistance force in Afghanistan, gives his response a video which appears to

  2. Video Said to Show Marines Urinating on Taliban – New York Times

    http://www.nytimes.com/…/video-said-to-show-marinesurinating-on-taliba…

    3 hours ago – The Afghan government on Thursday condemned the video, which apparently depicts four soldiers in uniform urinating on three dead Taliban

  3. Video of Marine Corps urinating on dead bodies prompts

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Video-Marine-Corps-urinating-dead-bodies-…

    8 hours ago – The 40 second clip shows four men in combat gear standing over the three corpses with their genitals exposed as they relieve themselves.

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