NEW YORK -- U.S. television networks were weighing Sunday whether to air video footage, shown elsewhere in the world, of what appeared to be American prisoners of war in Iraq.
The images were picked up from Iraqi television by the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Geneva Conventions make it illegal for prisoners to be pictured and humiliated, adding that "television networks that carry such pictures are, I would say, doing something that's unfortunate."
That left network executives with agonizing decisions involving both matters of taste and the question of whether they were letting the Pentagon influence their independent newsgathering decisions.
All of the networks said they would not show video of what was said to be an Iraqi morgue containing American bodies, saying the material was neither newsworthy nor appropriate for airing.
A snippet of the POW footage was shown on CBS, shortly after it was received from Al-Jazeera, while Rumsfeld was being interviewed on "Face the Nation." The network held off from showing it again after the Pentagon asked for time to contact the families of the soldiers involved.
"I consider that a legitimate request and I don't have any qualms about agreeing to it. The issue of sensitivity to the families is valid," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said.
In the Iraqi television footage, at least five prisoners, including one woman, were interviewed separately. Two were bandaged. They all looked terrified, with one captive who said he was from Kansas answering his questions in a shaky voice, his eyes darting back and forth between his interviewer and another person.
ABC News President David Westin said the network was giving the Pentagon "a reasonable period of time" to contact the families of the POWs before airing the tape.
"I always appreciate hearing Secretary Rumsfeld's viewpoint or that of any government official that we take into account," Westin said. "But we'd make our own judgment as to whether it was newsworthy."
Representatives at NBC News, which controls both the network and the cable channel MSNBC, and Fox News Channel said the issue of airing the footage was being discussed and that no decisions had been made.
CNN aired a single still image from the POW footage that provided no identifying features. The network said it still was considering whether to air the video footage.
Associated Press Television News, which distributes video to broadcasters all over the world, initially withheld transmission of the images of the POWs as the Defense Department notified families, but later went ahead with it, said Nigel Baker, APTN's director of content.
At the same time, some of the U.S.-based networks have aired video of captured or surrendering Iraqi soldiers.
CBS said that in the pictures it has used, the captured soldiers could not be identified.
ABC doesn't want to risk an American family learning a relative is a POW by watching it on TV, but the chances of that happening with a family in Iraq are almost nil, spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said.
"The difference here is that these are Americans," NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said.
Another issue executives must be considering in terms of airing such footage of U.S. soldiers is the wisdom of crossing the Pentagon at a time the government has agreed to let hundreds of journalists be embedded with military units. Thus far, television networks said they have been pleased with the access to action granted by the Pentagon.
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AP Television Writer Lynn Elber contributed to this report.
