In my view, Shootingstar makes an important point. With the high tech war, it is far too easy to be removed from the consequences. What comes to my mind is the video from the US armed forces that came to light a couple of years ago after some operation in in the middle east (I don't remember where now), when a 'convoy' was bombed. The commentary from the people behind the controls in the operation was more appropriate for playing with a video game. It was appalling to hear.

Going back to the original issue of corpses in the media, in the Gaddafi context, I was more stunned by the raw brutality of the scenes. Not so much the corpse per se, but what is considered a 'celebration' in some part of the world (I am glad not to inhabit): guns blazing in the air, dragging a body.

To the question of video versus still photography, I find stills have a much bigger impact on me. Most recently, I became ill after seeing a photo of severely burned victims (alive and walking) of the Hiroshima bomb at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I did not know that pictures were taken within the first few hours of the explosion. I later read about the photographer. He narrated that he found it incredibly difficult and almost disrespectful to photograph the victims, but felt it was his duty to document. Even then, he did not develop the film until a year later. Nowadays, with digital pictures and the daily media overload, it is hard to imagine such pictures would not be shown right away.