Primer Impacto, an hour-long news/chat show on Univision. Just now.
Univision has never been squeamish about showing snuff-film news footage. If three guys get run over by a drunk driver, Primer Impacto is where you’ll see the bones snap, followed by news, sports, and weather delivered by a team of surgically-altered, heavily made-up women who all look about 30 and look kinda creepy when they smile.
So I guess I’m not surprised that in a story about cellphone cameras becoming controversial during an execution — and man, that’s weird enough — some producer decided to include the drop. Same footage you’ve already seen on TV, just allowed to go further. And since Saddam’s not visible after the fall, that’s pretty much the show.
No warning, incidentally, and not particularly framed as anything different. Nobody called attention to it before or after. The sound was on, too, under the reporter’s voice. (I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying at the exact moment, but it was pretty casual — something about the person who recorded the footage. According to Google language tools, she either said the cameraman was “below and to the right,” or he had a “low rectum.” I’m guessing it was the former, although the latter may also be true.)
Anyhow, the gloves are off. The Saddam snuff video has just been shown casually on US national broadcast TV. Will it spread? I don’t know. But Telemundo is Univision’s biggest competitor, and they’re owned by NBC. Your guess is as good as mine.
PS: Not recommending the program, btw. Primer Impacto is mostly pure crap, like much of the genre, including a daily horoscope read by a bejeweled freak who doesn’t seem to realize his plastic surgeries make him look like a 70-year-old woman trying to look 50. Ewww. But I get the east coast feed on the satellite at 2, and I toss it on sometimes while I’m working, since in the first segments they cover stuff south of the border I don’t see much otherwise. The report on Ecuador’s response to the Basque bombing in Madrid just now was kinda cool. That sort of thing.
