New Delhi, Sept. 21 -- Sky News published a video this month that opens on a rigged explosive device and a pickaxe under a stark title card: "Inside the Taliban's Museum of Death".

Three seconds pass before a voice provides any explanation. By the time special correspondent Alex Crawford appears on screen, the viewer has already absorbed the image the Taliban's display is designed to convey - violence, spectacle and the mythology of terrorism transformed into history.

The problem is not that Sky News entered the museum - the Taliban's transformation of wartime violence into curated exhibits is itself newsworthy. The problem is what happens when the visual language of an extremist movement is placed at the centre of a short-form news rep...