Because of my back problems, I now blog from a comfortable recliner with my laptop on my lap (hmmm guess that is why they call it a laptop), where I can keep my legs elevated and save what little is left of this creaky body for the really important activities like walking to the bathroom. My recliner is naturally placed to be the comfortable chair for my TV, so while I blog, the TV is always on and almost always tuned to cable news. I channel surf and try to catch the latest breaking news at the appropriate times. I have waited and waited and waited some more to hear even one word regarding the scandal over the doctored Reuters photos. So far, in hours of TV listening, nary a word.
This morning I see that Newsbusters has addressed this issue:
Last night's report by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs that a "Beirut burning" photo that was clearly and clumsily doctored with Photoshop editing tools had made it way onto the wires from Reuters has morphed into what must be considered a full-blown scandal that should, by rights, shake the news service and other "Mainstream" Media outlets to their very foundations, and force them to reexamine how they conduct and control their photojournalistic efforts around the world.
Yes, you would think that a media that thrives on the smallest discrepancies of politicians, celebrities and anyone on the conservative side of the aisle would at least mention a scandal that is attracting worldwide attention. A Hollywood actor/director makes some inappropriate remarks while blotto from alcohol and those remarks generate days of coverage, print, broadcast, and electronic, but deliberate falsification of pictures under the banner of one of the principal wire services gets nada. Let your mind imagine for a moment what the mainstream media, in particular the New York Times, would publish if the Bush administration doctored war pictures. There is something very wrong with more than Adnan Hajj's picture, the big picture is totally out of whack.
Newsbusters puts forth the following points to consider:
-- Reuters has "dropped" the freelance Lebanese journalist after the image in question was shown to be doctored ...
-- The wire service offered perhaps the lamest excuse ever offered in the history of photojournalism for Adnan Hajj ...
-- Several blogs have begun analyzing Hajj's available body of work (link is to a page containing the first 10 of an estimated 346), and it is not faring well under the scrutiny.
-- Drinking from Home has noted possible problems with Reuters photos from a different photojournalist.
-- To show that the idea of staging events may not be unique to Adnan Hajj, Sweetness & Light seriously questions, based on his whereabouts and his apparent nonchalance, whether the person the media reported as the father of a slain Lebanese girl was indeed her father.
... the ability of Adnan Hajj to be in so many places nearly contemperaneously might raise questions as to whether he has been the actual picturetaker on all of the photos submitted in his name.
-- Dumb Looks Still Free is proposing a set of guidelines for photojournalists, including a requirement that photos' "raw digital data (be) made available freely for examination by the public" -- before any touching up of any kind was done for publication purposes.
I would remind everyone that the MSM was quick to issue a "debunking" statement regarding the Qana photo questions. A "debunk" that noone that I can tell is taking all that seriously, as big questions still surround the Qana photos with "Green Helmet" and "White Tee Shirt."
Wars today, since Vietnam, are TV wars and psyops is the most important aspect of war in today's electronic and visual world. People do not take the time to read long treatises, they are influenced by what they see. Pictures are worth a thousand words. When those pictures are false, the conclusions reached by the viewer become false by extension. This is unacceptable. The media is fond of saying they only report the facts, but more and more we are discovering that there is alot of wiggle room in their facts. When one man's fact is another man's fiction, a picture of the actual event is often used to clear up the discrepancies, but when the picture itself has been doctored, posed, manipulated, or set up, its value is zero and we, as decision makers (voters) are left with nothing on which to base our decisions. I find this incredibly disturbing.
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