Transcript from Hardball with Chris Matthews, 5-15-2002

Jerry Nachman, MSNBC editor in chief, and Manhattan Institute's William McGowan debate whether execution tape of Daniel Pearl should be aired on television

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Is President Bush using September 11th for political gain? That's the charge from Al Gore himself after the Republicans offered this photograph to donors as part of a fund-raiser. That story coming up in the POLITICAL BUZZ, and I love it.

But first, something really awful. The HARDBALL DEBATE tonight, and it's pretty gross. Should the media play videotape of kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl's last moments? Last night the "CBS Evening News" played excerpts from a propaganda tape made from footage of Pearl just before he was killed by Islamic extremists. CBS anchorman Dan Rather explained the decision this way: "We believe it is important for Americans to see it and to understand the full impact and danger of the vicious propaganda being spread against the United States and about Americans and that propaganda's potential effect, especially on the young, throughout Islam. We did not show the graphic scenes contained on the videotape, both for reasons of decency and out of respect for Mr. Pearl's family."

Despite Rather's explanation, the family of Daniel Pearl released this statement, quote, "Terrorists have made this video, confident that the American media would broadcast it and therefore serve their exact purpose. It is beyond our comprehension that any mother, wife, father or sister should have to relive this horrific tragedy and watch their loved one being repeatedly terrorized." Jerry Nachman is MSNBC's new editor in chief. We welcome him tonight. And William McGowan is author of the book, "Coloring the News."

Let's just get some up-front pot--what side you're on. Jerry, what side are you on in this debate? Was Dan Rather right last night to run that--that portion of Daniel Pearl speaking in his final moments?

Mr. JERRY NACHMAN (Editor-In-Chief, MSNBC): Yeah, he was. And I wish we had it, and I wish we could run it, Chris. I think it's very, very important to remind people constantly of who we are and who our enemy is. We came into this segment looking at a big hole in the ground that used to be the World Trade Center. Well, we're in a propaganda war, and as CBS pointed out correctly, we're losing the--the propaganda war. And when we show those pictures, we do the equivalent of what the news reels did in the 1940s when our people liberated the concentration camps. And, as you know, in the '30s and '40s there were people who were denying there was a Holocaust. It was a lot tougher to deny there was a Holocaust when we saw those grainy black-and-white films and still pictures of bodies stacked.

MATTHEWS: We're looking at those pictures right now, Jerry.

Mr. NACHMAN: I see them.

MATTHEWS: Producers have pulled them up. I know what you're talking about. So you say it's good to show it because it teaches the person watching American television how bad our enemy are, that they're willing to basically manipulate a guy to the last seconds of his life to push some propa--anti-Semitic propaganda, in this case, just to get that out of his mouth before they cut his head off? They're willing to do that.

Mr. NACHMAN: Chris, even worse, thi--this tape is being used by those people as a recruiting video.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

Mr. NACHMAN: I--I think the language that accompanied was--it was, 'This, the slaughter of the spy journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.' And you often have guests on this program talking about moral equivalency, and we have to understand what the provocation of the other side was. And we have US Marine guards down in Guantanamo serving suspected al-Qaeda terrorists holiday dinners of lamb and dates, and look how they're treating us. And I think that story has to be made time and time again because I think we're losing focus on who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let's hear the--let's hear your reaction to that. That was a longer introduction than I thought, but William McGowan, your thoughts. Should--should CBS have shown that tape? Should we show it if we get it?

Mr. WILLIAM McGOWAN (Manhattan Institute): No, I--I...

MATTHEWS: The picture--we're talking about so everybody sees the picture and imagine it--this is Daniel Pearl looking rather upbeat like he's going to live. It looks to me like they manipulated him right to the end before they killed him to get him to say all this stuff about his personal background, his religious background, his ethnic background just so they could make a point. And by the way, when I heard it on the CBS show today, it was scary. I was watching it on the Web today...

Mr. McGOWAN: Mm-hmm?

MATTHEWS: ...these kids were all calling in saying, 'I'd like to be part of that. I wish I was part of that execution.'

Mr. McGOWAN: Well, you know, you can get that point across. You can--you can report on the propagandistic nature of that tape without showing it. I think it was--it violated basic journalistic standards of taste and Danny Pearl's basic human dignity. This was--these statements were made from a guy who had been tortured and terrorized under the most brutal circumstances, and I don't think it does any good to show that in that--in that kind of context. You can--you can report the story with--through still photographs, through very graphic verbal descriptions, you don't have to show that tape. And I also think that they're--you know, it crosses the line between reporting on propaganda and aiding and abetting it. I mean, this is big...

MATTHEWS: How is that? That's the part I didn't buy from Mrs. Pearl, whoever, the family member who put out the statement. How does this help the cause of Islamic radicalism and--and terrorism?

Mr. McGOWAN: It's bounce. It's big. I mean, if you were the minister of propaganda in the al-Qaeda network, you'd be looking--smacking your lips today.

MATTHEWS: But everybody's looking at these people and saying, 'They're the bad guys. Bush is right.'

Mr. McGOWAN: Some of them. I don't--I don't think a lot of people in the Arab world are.

MATTHEWS: I--this is CBS we're talking about.

Mr. McGOWAN: OK.

Mr. NACHMAN: You know, what's interesting here is Mr. McGowan has authored a remarkable book that we should all read about how newsrooms have gotten so dainty that they've ignored the truth and they've ignored justice to deal with the sensitivities of people like minorities. And I think in this case, I know this hurt the Pearls, but sometimes there's a price to be paid. I never heard of any complaints of people saying you showed those concentration camp victims. And we are in television where pictures count. We learned an ano--enormous amount, Chris...

MATTHEWS: OK.

Mr. NACHMAN: ...about the war we were conducting in Vietnam because we showed the world a naked Vietnamese girl who had just gotten napalm. It was a devastating video component or visual component.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, we're looking at that picture right now, Jerry. But, you know, there have been deceptive pictures used in the Vietnam War context. What about the time when they caught the--when they caught the Viet Cong terrorist in the streets of Saigon, and the--and the guy executed him on the spot? It made him look like the VC were good guys, some--there it is--that somehow that guy's the good guy, he's the victim, when, in fact, the guy on the left is our guy doing his job of stopping terrorism.

Mr. NACHMAN: Well, but was he? The argument was that that guy, General Giap on the left...

MATTHEWS: Giap.

Mr. NACHMAN: ...didn't--didn't know from due process, from trials and this was the government that we were backing up...

MATTHEWS: Yeah, but they were catching that guy in the act of blowing people up in the streets of Saigon. I--I'm with him.

Mr. NACHMAN: I understand, but we argue...

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this: Jerry, I want to ask you about the question of decency here which was raised by Bill. The question of decency comes in this way: If you say we have to show the horror of our enemy and the willingness they have to exploit us and manipulate us and destroy us one man at a time as in the case of Daniel Pearl, what if you had--let me ask you if you had it--an NBC camera picks up a guy jumping off the 70th floor of the World Trade Center, they go in on a telescopic lens, they catch the horror in his face as he has to jump from that frying pan on the 70th floor, would you put that on the air that day?

Mr. NACHMAN: I--I probably would put a piece of it, not the whole thing. But you know what the most obscene thing...

MATTHEWS: You'd put the guy's face as he's jumping 70 floors on the air, close up?

Mr. NACHMAN: It--it would depend. The most obscene thing I've seen on television today, Chris, is that hole in the ground where 3,000 people died. That's obscene.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of that, what he just said?

Mr. McGOWAN: Well, Chris, you know, I--I don't think we need to be reminded over and over and over again just how nasty and brutal our enemies are. I mean, one of the producers on CBS, I think it was Bob Murphy, was quoted as saying after he saw this tape he realized that there were dangerous people out there who could do very bad things that would affect him and his family. Well, where has he been for the last eight months? I don't think we need this over and over again...

Mr. NACHMAN: I think--I think--I think the Dutch and the French and the Belgians and the Palestinians and our other so-called friends in the Arab street need to be reminded all the time of who our enemy is.

MATTHEWS: Let's talk about whether we really know the impact of these pictures. Jerry, you're the pro, you're the pro. You've been writing about this. You know, they--remember that time they did the piece on the Reagan administration and all they showed was Reagan doing photo op after photo op after photo op and Lesley Stahl thought it was really tough piece for CBS and--and Mike Deaver called her up and said, 'Great piece, Lesley,' because all it showed was Reagan doing his thing.

Mr. McGOWAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: Do we really know, Jerry, the impact of that picture that was shown on CBS last night of the horror of this guy in his last moments, Daniel Pearl? Do we know the impact?

Mr. NACHMAN: Not--not yet, Chris, but we know what the Holocaust pictures did. We know that the--the Holocaust pictures took the bat out of the hands of the deniers. There are still deniers, but there would have been a lot more if those pictures hadn't been out there.

MATTHEWS: Do you think there's any Arab person today who's an Islamist, who is on the radical end of that world, who has their mind changed because of that picture today? Any human being had his mind changed against terrorism, Jerry, because of that picture today?

Mr. NACHMAN: I think the neutrals and I think the apologists might have been affected because it's a very powerful video, because he's pointed out he was cooperative. He was a newsman. He was just doing his job and they slit his throat and they made video of it and then they chopped his head off. And I want the world to know those are the people we're being asked to understand better.

Mr. McGOWAN: I think it basically winds up stoking them. I think it--it actually--it actually feeds their anti-American...

MATTHEWS: Why are the young kids who are watching that, Jerry, if it's so effective in debunking the moral case for the Palestinian cause, why are these young kids saying, 'Gee, I wish I was there to do that job for the cause'? Why--if that's--it's the wrong reaction, though, from your perspective.

Mr. NACHMAN: Why were the people shouting in the streets in certain quarters of the Arab world when the planes hit those two buildings?

MATTHEWS: Well, that's a good question.

Mr. NACHMAN: And--and why was the news media...

MATTHEWS: Well, what is the answer to that question?

Mr. NACHMAN: Well--the--the answer to that question is they hate us.

MATTHEWS: Why?

Mr. NACHMAN: Why, this is what we do all day, Chris. They hate us probably because we're free and because we...

MATTHEWS: You really believe, as a journalist, you believe they hate somebody because they're free?

Mr. NACHMAN: I think--I think there's a lot of resentment in that world.

MATTHEWS: It's not that we back Israel or we have a different culture that scares them or we treat women the way they don't want us to treat women? Aren't there a number of logical reasons they don't like us?

Mr. NACHMAN: Chris, we've been backing Israel for 50 years.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Mr. NACHMAN: What happened all of a sudden? Why has it gotten to what it is now? Where is the critical mass?

MATTHEWS: Well, I--that's a good question. That's what I want a journalist to answer because I think the answer is: We've got to get the question and we've got to understand the answer and accept it when we hear it.

Mr. NACHMAN: Right. And--and like you, part of what a journalist does is ask questions, doesn't mean I can answer them all.

MATTHEWS: I appreciate that. Bill, let me ask you about this question. It seems to me there's--I--I made this list before, we--let's have you go all through it. On the family end we both agree this hurt the family. Do you agree, Jerry, to run these pictures?

Mr. NACHMAN: Yes, of--of course, and I--and I'm--I'm sorry about that.

MATTHEWS: From a--from a journalistic point of view, does it in--increase the public's knowledge of the situation or decrease it, or does it just play ball? Jerry, you say it increases our knowledge of the situation?

Mr. NACHMAN: Well, I think it also stiffens the spine of those people domestically and foreign who when they hear the president say 'you're either with us--with us or against us,' remember what the cause is.

Mr. McGOWAN: Jerry, you can accomplish that without showing the tape itself. You could put together a very verbally, hard-hitting report with pictures.

MATTHEWS: OK. OK, Jerry, let me ask you an insider's question: Will NBC run this tape when it gets it hands on it?

Mr. NACHMAN: They will here if I have a vote.

MATTHEWS: They will show it.

Mr. NACHMAN: They will here. There's a lot--there's a lot of...

MATTHEWS: OK. Do you think the other networks are going to show it, though?

Mr. McGOWAN: Jerry, I respect you a lot, but I--I would counsel against it.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much. Great conversation.

Mr. NACHMAN: Read your book--read your book again about--about...

MATTHEWS: Jerry Nachman, you're always welcome here because you're one of the bosses here. Anyway, thank you--thank you. And also thank you, Bill McGowan, nice to meet you.

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