This story just doesn’t want to die, though its subject has been dead for over two days now. The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about the latest wrinkles in the coverage of the death of Saddam Hussein and the emergence of the cell phone video…

“The real journalistic value of the footage, if it is authentic, is that it gives you much more of the context surrounding his execution,” said CNN president Jon Klein. “You learn so much more about what really was said, and how fraught with sectarian fervor the whole issue was. That could not be conveyed better than listening to the sound of the moment, even more so than the video.”

“It was a different angle of what we had already seen,” said David Rhodes, vp news at Fox News Channel. “It was useful because there’s some audio on it that you didn’t necessarily hear in the previous version, and it’s a fuller picture as to what was happening. You can hear all the principals speaking.”

Fox News Channel wasn’t willing to carry anything further than where it had stopped with the government-provided videotape, when the noose was being fitted around Saddam’s neck. The cell phone video continues with Saddam’s body falling through the trap door but no U.S. network ran that portion on the air. CNN too showed the video up to the noose, not necessarily because of any camera angle but, like others, because of the audio.