Thursday, July 28, 2005

British Request Fails to Stop ABC Report on Bomb Investigation

NYT reported The British police asked ABC News on Tuesday to withhold a report showing images of what were said to be unexploded bombs found in a car used by the July 7 bombers and of the inside of a subway train mangled in the attacks, a network official said yesterday. But on its "World News Tonight" program on Tuesday, ABC went ahead with the report, which said the attacks might have been part of a wider plot, said the official, Jon Banner, executive producer of "World News Tonight." He said the account was cut from the program when it was broadcast later in Britain by the BBC. The Metropolitan Police sent an e-mail message yesterday that asked news organizations "in the strongest possible terms" not to replay the images "because they may prejudice both the ongoing investigation and any future prosecutions." The police called the images "unauthorized." Mr. Banner said that Scotland Yard learned that ABC News was going to broadcast the story and asked it to hold back. "We checked with other police sources here and in London, checked with our own security consultants," before making a decision to go forward, he said. "We thought it was newsworthy."

And I suspect that if the police were right, and ABC's broadcast of the image prejudices both the ongoing investigation and any future prosecutions they will also find it "newsworthy" to blame the police, but I suspect they will not admit that they were at fault.

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