Really?

The AP seeks to minimize the murder of Nick Berg:

Until stomach-churning pictures emerged of naked Iraqi prisoners stacked like firewood or held at the end of a leash by their American captors, wartime prison abuse was a virtual non-story.

Similarly, the death of American Nick Berg in Iraq may have been little more than a footnote until video was posted Tuesday showing an executioner cutting off the man's head with a knife.. . .

CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr, who reported on the alleged abuse at least four times before the pictures came out, said they illustrated a breakdown in military discipline that hadn't been seen in generations. The U.S. military was cast in the unfamiliar public role of bad guys.

The episode should be a lesson for the news media, Starr said.

``It's very clear that potentially terrible abuses were taking place,'' she said, ``and it didn't become a big story until people could see these virtually pornographic images.''

Interesting that fellow reporters are cited as sources for conclusions like that.