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martin_wheatman

Listed below are comments made by martin_wheatman between Thursday, 3rd July 2008 and Thursday, 3rd July 2008.

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Grim decisions 3:41pm on 03 Jul 2008 Perhaps this should be compared with the showing of the summary execution of the capture Vietnamese (Vietcom?) combatant (?) by the BBC in the latter part of the Vietnamese war (1970ish)?

A bound, plain clothed prisoner is walked into the street, and a western (presumably American) soldier raises a pistol to the prisoner's head, and pulls the trigger, as which point the picture freezes. The picture is often show as a still, but the film exists. I saw this as a 5 or 6 year old on the BBC, either on the early evening news or on a current affairs programme, but is iconic of the war.

It wasn't until years later that I found on that the film clip goes onto show the body fall and the street fill with blood, truly showing how nasty the world - or rather people's actions - can be. It is up to us as viewers to draw our own conclusions.

Forty years on, and the same editorial decision are having to be made, and to me it seems the same results are reached. Ok, the screening of aftermath can be traded for the proximity of the cameraman, but I think the BBC broadly "gets it right" - it shows what is going on in the world.

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