Pundits debate worth of releasing film of Irwin's death

"The only remote justification for publicizing this would be accident prevention."

Martin Kaplan, media analyst

"If I'm going to die," the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin said in a 2002 interview, "at least I want it filmed."

He spoke with his usual humor, and clearly had no idea what would happen four years later. But the fact is, a tape does exist of Irwin's fatal encounter with a stingray while filming a documentary. And so the question arises: In the age of instant Web videos, might it get out? And in the broader sense, is making footage of a death public ever justified?

For its part, Discovery Communications, the network where Irwin became a star, said there was absolutely no truth to rumors that the footage, now in possession of police in Queensland, Australia, might be released.

But that does not mean there are not concerns that someone could attempt to get their hands on it and publicize it for lurid means -- or just to show they had it. That, said media analyst Martin Kaplan, would be tantamount to a snuff film.

"The only remote justification for publicizing this would be accident prevention," said Kaplan, of the Annenberg School for Com-munication at the University of Southern California.

"But that argument is a stretch," he added.

Experts say deaths from a stingray encounter are exceedingly rare.

Irwin's manager, John Stainton, had the painful experience of watching the videotape where Irwin pulls the stingray barb from his chest. He called it "shocking."

"It's a very hard thing to watch, because you are actually witnessing somebody die, and it's terrible," he told reporters.

Stainton later said on CNN's Larry King Live that he would never want the tape shown publicly.

"I mean, it should be destroyed," Stainton told King on Tuesday.

Noting the tape now is evidence in a coroner's inquest, Stainton said, "When that is finally released, it will never see the light of day. Ever. Ever. I actually saw it, but I don't want to see it again."

The fact that a tape exists recalls the death of Timothy Treadwell, a bear enthusiast who lived among bears for a dozen years in Alaska before being fatally mauled in 2003.

A video camera with the lens cap on captured the audio of that attack. It is in possession of a friend and has never emerged in public -- though in his acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man, director Werner Herzog was seen listening to it with headphones on.

Samuel Freedman, who teaches a media ethics class at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, says the issue is "whether there is any compelling public interest" in the release of something so shocking as footage of a death.

In this case, he says, there clearly isn't.

"The lay person is not going into the water trying to have encounters with stingrays," Freedman said. "It would be purely titillation and necrophilia if anyone were to show this."