fresh YORK -- "If I'm going to die,...

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

A tape does exist of Irwin's fatal attack with a stingray while filming a TV exhibit to And so the question arises: In the age of instant Web videos, might it acquire out? And in the broader understanding is making footage of a death public perpetually justified?

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

yet that doesn't mean there aren't regards that someone could attempt to learn their hands on it and publicize it for lurid means -- or just to present to view they had it. That, said media analyst Martin Kaplan, would be tantamount to a offence film.

"The solitary remote justification for publicizing this would be accident prevention," said Kaplan, of the Annenberg institute for Communication at the University of Southern California. "But that argument is a stretch" adroits say deaths from a stingray onset are exceedingly rare.

BEAR ATTACK onward AUDIO

The fact that a tape exists recalls the death of Timothy Treadwell, a bear enthusiast who lived among them for a dozen years in Alaska before being fatally mauled in 2003 A video camera with the len cap upon captured the audio of that attack. It is in possession of a friend and has none emerged in public -- however in his acclaimed documentary "Grizzly Man," director Werner Herzog was seen listening to it with headphones forward

'TITILLATION AND NECROPHILIA'

Samuel G Freedman, who teaches a media ethics class at the Columbia University Graduate seminary of Journalism, says the issue is "whether there is any compelling public interest" in the release of something in such a manner shocking as footage of a death. Here, he says, there clearly isn't.

"The lay someone is not going into the water trying to have combats with stingrays," Freedman said. "It would be merely titillation and necrophilia if anyone were to indicate this."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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