I have lamented his absence almost as much as I have the absence of balance among my fellow Refugees from Sozadee.
Of the photos from Lebanon, Rutten says, Take a Closer Look, by which he means, a longer look.
Rutten gives credit to the ousting of Reuters and its ex-photographer Adnan Hajj to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. Johnson, says Rutten was tipped off by an anonymous tipster. The rest is history.
But Rutten says the media should pursue 'the rest of the story':
What the major news organizations ought to be doing is to make their own analysis of the images coming out of Lebanon and if, as seems more than likely, they find widespread malfeasance, some hard questions need to be asked about why it occurred. Some of it may stem from the urge every photographer feels to make a photo perfect. Some of it probably flows from a simple economic imperative — a freelancer who produces dramatic images gets picked up more and paid more. Moreover, the obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press means there's an eager market for pictures of dead Lebanese babies.
It's worth noting in this context that there is no similar flow of propagandistic images coming from the Israeli side of the border. That's because one side — the democratically elected government of Israel — views death as a tragedy and the other — the Iranian financed terrorist organization Hezbollah — sees it as an opportunity. In this case, turning their own dead children into material creates an opportunity to cloud the fact that every Lebanese casualty, tragic as he or she is, was killed or injured as an unavoidable consequence of Israel's pursuit of terrorists who use their own people as human shields. Every Israeli civilian killed or injured was the victim of a terrorist attack intended to harm civilians. That alone ought to wash away any blood-stained suggestion of moral equivalency.
That brings us to the most troubling of the possible explanations for these fraudulent photos, which is that some of the photojournalists involved are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the Hezbollah terrorists. It's a possibility fraught with harsh implications, but it needs to be examined thoroughly and openly.
Photos from Little Green Footballs
3 comments:
Excellent post. It made me think about what I have seen so far as news coverage and I agree that it appears the majority of pictures, both print and otherwise, are of Lebanese, injured and dead.
"The weapons of war now include not only bombs and missiles, rape and torture, but also all the tricks perfected by the public relations agencies and advertising geniuses on Madison Avenue. If we can't kill enough civilians, just photoshop some more into the rubble."
Quoting my own blog entry...... Photo(shop) Finish. Obviously, I couldn;t agree with you more....
Another correction of the MSM by the blogosphere occurs on the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington appeared with Howard Kurtz and Charles Johnson:
KURTZ:
Arianna Huffington, you're obviously on a different side of the political fence than Charles Johnson, but do you think this is another example of bloggers, you know, holding the mainstream media accountable?
HUFFINGTON:
Absolutely. In fact, I want to congratulate Charles. That is exactly what bloggers should be doing. It was outrageous what Reuters allowed to appear. And the fact that they fired the photographer, it was the only legitimate response.
And I want to take this a step further and say that we should hold all journalists accountable, whether they are photojournalists or not, for deceptive statements, whether they're images or words.
I mean, you had your own headline anchorman, Chuck Roberts, describe Lamont as the al Qaeda candidate. This is an equally deceitful, fraudulent, fabricated statement. There should be zero tolerance for all those deceits, whether in images or words.
KURTZ:
Well, what Chuck Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate. But it's certainly not a formulation I would have used.
HUFFINGTON:
You cannot find a single person who called Lamont the al Qaeda candidate, except Chuck Roberts. And what have been the consequences when it comes to Chuck Roberts? Has he been demoted to be covering Paris Hilton or entertainment news? ... It's about time that there is that same kind of accountability that Charles is demanding from photojournalists from journalists, as well.
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