On Wednesday's front page, the Dallas Morning News ran no photos with the Nick Berg execution story other than a mugshot. Looks a bit like their editorial board disagreed with that call, and on Thursday's editorial page will run a photo of a terrorist holding up Berg's severed head. The head is obscured by a black box.

The editorial with the photo gives this explanation:

Presenting this photograph, which was taken from an al-Qaeda-affiliated Web site, is important because of the power of image to shape public opinion. Shocking photographs have driven the Abu Ghraib prison atrocity story, which has now become a national crisis of confidence in this nation's civilian and military leadership, and the mission in Iraq. If we show you images of Abu Ghraib abuses, and of soldiers' coffins at Dover Air Force base because we think you should know the truth about this war, then we should show you this image, too.

I proposed this morning that we run the image of the terrorist brandishing the severed head, but blur the face on the head, for this reason alone: to remind readers what kind of enemy we're up against. The photos from Abu Ghraib provoked a national spasm of soul-searching, and many in this country are suffering in turn from a loss of confidence in American leadership, and the mission in Iraq. I am not opposed to those photos being released. But I think we owe it to the public to tell the other side of the story.

We had considered digitizing it much as television does. We looked at that image and even that we felt was borderline gruesome. It didn't quite -- we decided in the beginning that, if we were going to do this, we wanted to do it in a responsible way and stick to some narrow principles. And we felt that the -- digitizing it didn't quite achieve that. And that's why we went with this particular route.

>This is the Enemy: Vile image shows world why we fight [Dallas Morning News]
>Should DMN show the beheading? [DMN Daily]
>NewsNight with Aaron Brown [CNN]