Vera and Sandra I agree with you completely- I feel CNN should show animal abuse footage, and all they can of it, but only in the name of educating and opening the public's eyes. It's not the content of this particular tape that I objected to being shown , it's the context it was used in- it wasn't being shown over and over in order to get people to rally against animal experimentation, it was being shown over and over in order to incite more hatred towards Al Quaeda and fuel the war effort. That poor dog was exploited twice- first by the humans who gassed him, then by CNN who used his death as a shameless grab for viewers. Think about it, they had the footage of journalist Daniel Pearl's execution, but they never aired that- why? Because the family asked them not to, and to do so would be in very poor taste- I think we'd all agree on that. The execution of this dog is no different, given the context that it was being used in.
I think the only way for CNN to justify itself is to show footage of animal experimentation in their own country- they should show footage equally as horrible of what Americans do to animals in the name of research, and they should show it all day long, repeatedly. That would be education, not exploitation.