Their position argues that the dissemination of this recorded war crime (which they refer to as "propaganda") needlessly frightens Americans while providing encouragement and motivation to our enemies, thereby "helping the terrorists win." You will recall this dirge of a platitude from roughly 2004, the last time I can recall that level of childishly sniveling pseudo-psychology from our bastions of the fourth estate. Even if you choose to call the recorded slaughter of a civilian non-combatant sent to western civilization as a crowing threat propaganda, a descriptor which I find incredibly dismissive and diminutive in this case, we are swayed by that threat and not fulfilling our requirement as a civilized culture when we intentionally deny our citizens an opportunity to witness for themselves the horrific crushing force that nameless people half a world away face daily. Looking away, treating our sworn enemies as if they were schoolyard bullies that can be disarmed or dissuaded from hurting us by ignoring them, is an irretrievably fatal attitude.
The reactionary and mistaken argument that bearing witness to the vicious brutality of our religious enemies will bolster their credibility or respect ignores two simple points indicating the opposite to be true. No one thinks that these theocratic assholes are not serious actors in their region (not legitimate actors, mind you), nor does anyone think they lack the infrastructure and armament to accomplish their goals. The videos released by the "caliphate" therefore act as reminders and reinforcement, not as revelation. Consideration of what effect our reaction has on our enemies is entirely irrelevant in this case. Secondly, any kind of censorship ignores the irrepressible ability for people who want to see or hear something to seek it out, be they news addicts or the easily conned western jihadist, already planning on betraying both their community and their affiliation with humanity. Conversely, those of us who actively avoid graphic images from war zones are unaffected, as they would have no interest to begin with.
Regardless of the position taken by the major American media outlets, and independent of how many individuals choose to view the video in its entirety, our religious enemies are fervently slaughtering people from every subsection of humanity that isn't theirs. It may thrill them to hear that the spineless among us had our resolve crushed instead of steeled by this barbarism, but they're not sitting on their heels waiting for that news to arrive, nor would its arrival make them feel in any way understood or sated.
Calls to censor and conceal the video represents a cowardly capitulation to our religious enemies on the part of the American media, as it shows we are willing to repeat the same reprehensible and indefensible mistakes engaged in during the Danish Mohammed cartoon incident. In that case, mindless and violent Imams cried without injury while threatening the rest of the world with violence if we should so much as look at a cartoon, which we spinelessly submitted to. Any kind of censorship is an assault on our first amendment, doubly so in the current case, when some external actor can cause us to voluntarily censor ourselves without so much as a request. Our culture's method of information gathering is now almost entirely visual. The idea of verbally relating an event when a video record of it exists is the kind of journalism better suited to a century ago. No interpretation of the first amendment requires or allows forcing people to watch anything they don't wish to, but any interpretation of it proscribes preventing or restricting the free flow of information.
Indeed, in our lifetime, the free flow of war zone information, images, and video have had huge impact. An increase in exposure to the engagement seems to herald its end, in my opinion. Following the cessation of conflicts, objective review of the timeline shows transparency and unfiltered images reaching the mass populace both beneficially increases our collective understanding of the location, consequences, and cost in lives while negatively affecting public support for the conflict.
We simply must know what we are up against. These people mean to kill us, one by one if they have to. And while they may not feel like the most proximate threat, our countrymen are defecting to their ranks in handfuls. The very real danger posed by the pretend "caliphate" is only going to grow until they are extirpated, and volunteering to cinch our own muzzle against them will be our collective future regret.
