Arab news coverage of beheading slight

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Arab news media reacted cautiously Wednesday to the videotaped beheading of an American in Iraq, with some newspapers conspicuously playing it down.

Some commentators condemned the slaying and lamented that it would draw attention away from U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Others said their opinions of the U.S. government had fallen so low that they have difficulty speaking out against the beheading.

"In normal circumstances, I could condemn the slaughtering of the American, but we are living in abnormal circumstances. I cannot condemn it now," said Egyptian columnist Nour al-Huda Zaki.

"The country that advocates human rights principles is now violating them and taking us back to the Dark Ages."

Zaki, a senior journalist for the Cairo newspaper Al-Arabi, said she expected few Arab newspapers to cover the beheading extensively because reporting on it could be read as condemning it.

Indeed, across the Arab world there were few banner headlines or televised reports about the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American shown beheaded in a videotape posted Tuesday on a militant Web site. The video claimed responsibility in the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

A notable exception was Kuwait's Al-Siyassah daily, which ran a photo of a masked militant holding up Berg's severed head. Five of Kuwait's seven dailies published front-page reports on the killing.

The biggest pan-Arab television stations — Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya — broadcast brief segments of the video Tuesday night and carried longer footage Wednesday. Neither station showed the beheading itself.

"The news story itself is strong enough," said Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout. "To show the actual beheading is out of the realm of decency."

Arab television stations are less reluctant to show bloody images from wars than some stations in the West, but said they drew the line at showing a beheading.

The presenter on Lebanon's private Al Hayat-LBC station, which led its bulletins Wednesday with the video, said: "We apologize to our viewers for not showing the entire tape because of the ugliness of the scene."

Kuwait's state television broadcast news of the execution but not the video. In Jordan, state television aired its report along with a still photo from the video.

The beheading got little attention in Wednesday's newspapers in most Arab countries.