http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221141/posts

Must be a fake, right?

Coincidences do happen in reality, not only in books. Moses Wine would know that. But you have become a total bonehead.

To quote that famous British prostitute,sorry,other prostitute,Mandy Rice-Davis “They would say that wouldn’t they?”

Mentally hijacked, I mean.

“No clear evidence exists that the killers were Baathists, as opposed to militant Islamists or another subversive group. Wretchard and Simon also seem to have overlooked why journalists could have had plenty of reason to be in the vicinity of Haifa Street. As Lekic noted in his report, the “busy, traffic-clogged street has been the scene of almost daily gunfights between the insurgents and U.S. troops and the forces of the U.S.-installed interim government.”

A source at the Associated Press knowledgeable about the events covered in Baghdad on Sunday told Salon that accusations that the photographer was aware of the militants’ plans are “ridiculous.” The photographer, whose identity the AP is withholding due to safety concerns, was likely “tipped off to a demonstration that was supposed to take place on Haifa Street,” said the AP source, who was not at liberty to comment by name. But the photographer “definitely would not have had foreknowledge” of a violent event like an execution, the source said.

Reporting from the most perilous sectors of a war zone is a complicated business, both in terms of access and safety. The kind of flimsy commentary-with-an-agenda bouncing around the conservative blogosphere right now regarding an AP insurgency against the war effort is not only a disservice to the public but a dishonor to the many journalists who have been injured or killed carrying out their dangerous mission in Iraq.”

But what if the only requirement for the explosion to take place was the presence of a photo-journalist?

My contention is that not a few of the outrages are staged for the benefit of journalists and the “neutral conduit” stance of journalists has got to be re-examined in the light of this.

If the journalist had not have gone would there have been an explosion?

Journalistic principles,as they exist,exist within the new paradigm of warfare,there are those who have no compunction committing atrocities in the full glare of publicity,atrocities for which they can be tried as war criminals.They don’t care!

So perhaps journalists should think carefully about every tip off the receive, “Am I the observer or the reason?”

Thanks for the information. Bloggic Concentration of Distributed Knowledge strikes again!

That tag by the credit means whoever shot it was not an AP photographer or even necessarily a photojournalist. Sometimes people at news events take pictures and sell them to the AP without having had any experience as a photographer, such as in the case of the Pulitzer-winning picture of the firefighter and the child at the Oklahoma City bombing.

Even the AP stringers–part-time or assignment based photographers–have signed contracts and do not have the /str notation on their credit. So I highly doubt it was taken by someone affiliated in any way with the AP.

It is unlikely those photos were taken by a Western freelancer due to the risks involved in travelling around. It’s likely it was an Iraqi photographer, and frankly the AP doesn’t care much where the photos come from, so the person who took them may very well have had prior knowledge of something going down.

Now, the choice here is this: Should the journalist have gone with the insurgents in the first place? This journalist produced stories for the western press about Iraqi insurgents, who they are fighting, why they are fighting, etc. This, in my estimation, gives invaluable information to the American people about who their soldiers are fighting and why. This information, of course, could (and probably was) used by the American military to better understand the enemy that they faced.

From the journalist’s point of view, the choice was simple… they could either sit in the green zone watching Al Jazeera, hoping for a glimpse at what was happening around them, or they could get out there and capture the story for themselves and put their own biases on it (or, god forbid, produce an unbiased story). It’s not like they could have stopped the insurgents from conducting the bombing, or even passed along any information that would have been useful to the American military. The only choice was to cover the story or not.

This mass speculation about terrorists giving journalists the opportunity to avert disaster is ridiculous. No terrorist organization is going to call up a journalist and say “Hey, yeah, we’re going to blow up the building on the corner of 1st and Main tomorrow morning at 8:20am, so come on over with a camera if you’d like… oh, and please don’t tell the American military”.

Now that’s odd. I’m getting a strong feeling of deja vue. I’m sure I read an almost identical posting somewhere else a while ago.

It is disturbing that the AP can be used so transparently if so, but I suppose I should be surprised considering the NYT prints press releases as “news”.

More sleuthing! Thanks for the link. Now if only a tornado would hit the house while my camera was… wait, do I own a camera?