It hasn’t been that long – April 11, 2003, to be exact – since Eason Jordan made his surprising admission on the pages of the New York Times that CNN had coddled Saddam for access to his dictatorship (The News We Kept to Ourselves). But there have been many media unveilings since then, including one at Davos that resulted in a version of “Here GOES Mr. Jordan” for that same gentleman. The CNN exec became too much of a hot potato for the company when he accused US soldiers of targeting journalists without a shred of evidence. And then there was, on a less publicized level, the contretemps surrounding the photography Pulitzer awarded to the AP. How did those shutter bugs miraculously turn up at the Scene of the Terror with such regularity?
And now – thanks to LGF – we have the inevitably named Reutersgate. The slapdash quality of the Photoshop by Adnan Hajj allows us a fortuitous window into the world of Lebanon reporting and news photography. The ubiquitous Mr. Hajj was apparently also present at Qana where the number of fatalities dropped from sixty to twenty-eight when the slightest scrutiny was given to the initial reports. Other photos of his from other venues are currently under blogospheric investigation for their propagandistic distortions. How was it that Reuters came to employ such a person? And why wasn’t he better edited? Was it an accident? Let’s examine:
On the surface, this could look like an over-eager employee anxious to have his work “sell” during wartime. If it bleeds, it ledes, they say, so why not a few more phony smoke clouds? But having spent a fair amount of time in the presence of media in communist regimes (China, Soviet Union, Cuba) I am skeptical of this excuse. In totalitarian states, very little happens exclusively for the money. Yes, money follows good behavior, but the good (obedient) behavior comes first. Many reports from Hezbollahland, from the almost grudging Nic Robertson at CNN to the more intrepid Michael Totten, have shown us a rigid mind control system that would make the KGB envious. It’s hard to believe Mr. Hajj was not under the full control of that system, whether willingly or not is unclear (possibly even to the photographer himself).
What is clear is that to Reuters (AP, CNN, etc.) cooperation with such people was the only way in to a closed society. Of course what results from that is distortions in the reporting of news we can only begin to imagine. No doubt, in their more honest moments, these press institutions and their personnel acknowledge this to themselves. But then they push on. In Reuters own report of today’s embarrassment (that doesn’t acknowledge Little Green Footballs, of course, and speaks only of vague “blogs”) they admit their difficulties with Mr. Hajj (he’s been fired), but continue to deny any problems with the Qana reporting:
He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Middle East conflict.Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.
Of course, they have to reject those allegations at this point, because to accept them now would begin an amazing unraveling of the mainstream media, that may be about to happen anyway. The basic media silence around the announced decline in actual deaths at Qana is essentially an admission that something was misreported, someone was conned. How easily and how much are as yet unclear.
But to return to the mindset that allows, indeed effectively encourages, such photography, it is worth noting that in order to justify this kind of behavior… hiring the heavily biased… to yourself, you have to pretend you are doing it for a “greater good.” In this case that would not seem to be easy since Hezbollah is well known to be a religious fascist organization with sub-Medieval values rooted in misogyny, homophobia and the utter defeat of the Enlightenment. So how then do you find this “greater good” outside the financial viability of your institution? What mind games do you have to do to yourself? What contortions? And yet somehow they manage. Their own essential self-loathing (for this is what you find all over Reuters, the Guardian and the BBC) allows them to project out their self-disgust onto America and Israel, as if those nations, not Hezbollah, were the cause of the terror organization’s activities, as if the 15,000 missiles hidden in Lebanon were some Mossad trick and the rise of the nuclear mullahs was simply a “normal” reaction to American imperialism. As if.
Today, for the moment, these media are feeling on the defensive. May they stay that way until they reform.
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29 Comments
1. Ron:Looking at PowerLine a few moments ago I found that Reuter’s has been misled once more by an apparent Hezbollah sympathizer. They print the terrorist pictures and now allow their front pages to be used for propaganda. Go to the site and take a look, its pretty bad, much worse than the pictures. Little Green Footballs and RealClearPolitics were in there first.
“August 06, 2006
Hezbollah’s propaganda campaign
Even though it’s incidental to his principal point, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Jack Kelly describes the issues raised on the Internet concerning the stage management of the aftermath of the Qana bombing: “Hearts and minds.” On a closely related note, Walid Phares asks whether Reuters has cooperated with Hezbollah in framing Lebanon’s response to the draft UN Security Council resolution: “Reuters hijacking Lebanon’s answer to the UN?” (Thanks to RealClearPolitics and Little Green Footballs.)”
Posted by Scott at 07:16 PM
Aug 6, 2006 - 6:09 pm 2. Jamison1:Here is an article about Yet another doctored Reuters photo.
Aug 6, 2006 - 7:10 pm 3. Ric Locke:I will differ, slightly. I agree with most of your conclusions, but the motive…
It starts with outsourcing. The various Governments of the world have made it so expensive and cumbersome to hire employees that companies are making maximum use of contract labor. That’s fine; it works to the benefit of both company and contractor if the contractors are trustworthy and/or carefully monitored for proper performance.
In the news business, “outsourcing” means stringers, independent operators under contract to the agency to provide news reports. The trouble comes from the fact that AP, Reuters, AFP, and the rest have no effective means of monitoring the work — they’ve discarded full-time employees almost entirely and become dependent on the stringers. A few death threats, combined with native laziness and the defiant ignorance “journalists” regard as a requirement for membership in their “profession”, keep anybody capable of checking the info at the source safely at the bar at the International Hotel, isolated, ineffective, and useless.
The Islamists know just enough about a free press to realize that a genuine one is a death threat to them and their cause. Stringers inevitably come from the local society, and are thereby subject to the pressures that can be brought to bear on members. It’s relatively easy for the Islamists to bully, blackmail, and blackjack stringers into following the “party line” (and, commonly enough, a dedicated Islamist could certainly volunteer for the duty.) From the Islamist point of view it helps that the Jordan Doctrine is in place — the news services themselves have already weeded out anybody not willing to go along with the narrative, in the interest of “preserving access”.
The net result is that reports from stringers in the Middle East can be uniformly expected to follow the Islamist narrative; if they did not, the stringer involved would not survive. And since all such reports follow the same narrative the Head Office has no other information, so tends to start incorporating that narrative into their thinking. At this point bias comes in: the narrative as it stands tends to discredit and/or damage George W. Bush and the American Right, so it gets more credence than it should. But bias is a minor deal. Even if they were biased the other way, they couldn’t help but adjust to the fact that everything they hear has the same slant. If you never see anything that contradicts, you’re bound to begin believing.
But it’s all the news service has, and they have to have product — so out it goes, any reservations not mentioned (suppressed when possible) in the interest of maintaining revenue flow. This one photo is trivial in the larger scheme of things. It’s significant only in that it’s a brightcolored waving loose end that looks grabbable. If bloggers pull hard enough, the whole fabric of fabrications might come unraveled, and it’s even better if a few other loops can be severed so people can get a grip.
One can hope, anyway. But the news services will be ferocious in defending their practices; be ready for anything from character assassination to the sort involving lead poisoning. Should be interesting.
Regards,
Aug 6, 2006 - 7:34 pm 4. Jamison1:Ric
Looks like there is a third photo problem out there. In this case, two photos with two different captions of one woman supposedly loosing her house… on two different days, to rocket attacks.
Aug 6, 2006 - 7:34 pm 5. chuck:Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images
But did they? If so, how seriously? When these organizations claim to have reviewed the claims it sounds like “the check is in the mail.” A little lie to avoid having to act.
Aug 6, 2006 - 7:47 pm 6. Richard Nieporent:Ric, you are being much too kind to Reuters and the rest of the MSM. The reason we are getting distorted reports from the stringers is not because the MSM have been misled, but because they are hearing what they want to hear. They want Israel to be the villain. Thus when they get a report confirming their beliefs they report it without questioning its validity. The MSM have become the propagandists for Hezbollah.
Aug 6, 2006 - 8:22 pm 7. Jamison1:Here is yet another one, from Powerline blog:
Aug 6, 2006 - 8:31 pm 8. Luther McLeod:Ric, good comment, though I agree with Richard’s addendum. We really cannot trust anything from the MSM, and certainly not from the ’stringers’ they employ in the ME. We are in a war for the hearts, souls and minds of those who believe in western civ. That is our bulwark. We lose that, we lose all.
Aug 6, 2006 - 9:02 pm 9. gumshoe:Jawa report’s thread on
another doctored Hajj photo of an F-16 dropping flares,a poster asked:
“how many is that now? 3? 4? doctored photos??”
thread here:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php
____________________
i suggested:
somebody needs to pull together
a dedicated website
for Mr Hajj’s art collection.
maybe Mr Hajj could call it
Aug 6, 2006 - 9:56 pm 10. Ric Locke:“Damn Your Eyes.”
Richard, Luther, I don’t disagree with you. I simply think that bias, in the shape of anti-Bush or anti-Semitic sentiment, is a contributory factor rather than the driver. The driver is their abandonment of their responsibility to report the news, which in turn is derived from a combination of arrogance about their role and crassly financial “business” concerns.
Regards,
Aug 6, 2006 - 11:22 pm 11. LoafingOaf:Ric
When Reuters was questioned about a photoshopped photo last year showing a handwritten note Bush wrote during a U.N. meeting, they gace a much more detailed explanation. Reuters’ news editor for pictures for the Americas went over exactly what was going on and what exactly was photoshopped and why. We should insist on similar transparancy about the doctored Lenanon photos, which is now a major scandal regardless of when the MSM decides to get curious about it.
Here’s the explanation about the Bush note they used some photoshop on: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001137642
Aug 7, 2006 - 2:25 am 12. Terrye:I just think they make up their minds as to what the truth is and then seek out or create the eveidence that supprts it.
Self loathing? It is the usual white guilt.
Aug 7, 2006 - 3:53 am 13. mythusmage:Question for the MSM
If you can’t get an honest report out of a region thanks to interference from people on the scene, why go there?
Patient: Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Then stop doing that.
Aug 7, 2006 - 6:04 am 14. Plainslow:“cooperation with such people was the only way in to a closed society.”
Can someone explain, why it is even important to get this info out of a closed society? The free world gets drilled by writer’s and have to answer to them. These people answer to only whom they wish to, and that is only someone who is helping them. They should have to answer to Reuter’s just as Blair does.
Aug 7, 2006 - 6:13 am 15. Vulgorilla:That’s why they’ve become known as “Al-Reuters”, along with AP (Associated Phables). And the TSM (Terrorist Supporting Media – old MSM) wonders why consumers are deserting them in droves. Why would I want to spend time reading/listening to fairy tales from the TSM when I can scour the web and find out what really happened? It will take years for them to even start to regain any semblance of credibility, if at all. They’ve just become one big propaganda machine for the far left … nothing more.
Back before the 2004 presidential elections, AP reported that the crowd boo’d when President Bush, at a campaign rally, wished Bill Clinton a speedy recovery from his impending heart bypass surgery. I listened to three different recordings of that rally and only heard cheers from the crowd at Bush’s well wishes. The AP wanted to portray Republicans as mean spirited, which of course was not the case, and so fabricated the story.
Based upon all of this, I now assume all photos from Al-Reuters are altered for political purposes and all stories from the AP fabricated for the same reason. Just fairy tales … nothing more.
Aug 7, 2006 - 6:24 am 16. dougf:It starts with outsourcing.–Ric locke
Well the process starts with outsourcing. That is true enough. But that is merely a technical means by which the product is delivered to the media.
It is what the media chooses to do with the product that is the essential problem. You call them ‘jihadists’ with all the connotations involved, and because you so identify them, you really don’t give a rat’s a** about their propaganda efforts. As long as they die.
The media, don’t care that they are jihadists. They as Roger said. “their own essential self-loathing”, dicatating the terms of reference, at best make no distiction between the ’sides’ and at worst actively work so that the ‘output’ is objectively pro-jihadi.
If you can’t or won’t make any distinctions between realities, then you are by default going to serve as a propaganda arm of a totalitarian mind-set.
What underlies the systemic problem is not so much the lack of objectivity in our bankrupt media, although that is readily demonstrated. What anchors the problem is place is a misplaced sense of objectivity. The equivalence of the murderer to the murdered, The terrorist to the terrorised.
Because the media believes that there is no ‘better’ side, it willingly allows itself to be used by the ‘worst’ side. It ‘chooses’ to be a voice for the ‘enemy’ simply because it does not so see them. There can never be an ENEMY.
In Western media world there is no ‘external’or existential ENEMY, simply because the media has no internal reference points. It is a citizen of the World. And such citizens can’t be burdened with picky little issues such as seeing one ’side’ as more deserving than another. And it can certainly never see that ‘our’ side is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
This might work fine in a world where the ‘other’ side was playing by the same rules. Might.
That’s not This World. We get the BBC; They get Al-Jazerra. Their beliefs are reinforced daily; Ours are castigated and weakened.
It’s not the ‘outsourcing’ . Not really. It’s the attitude behind the ‘news’ that is the real problem. It’s cancerous ,and it’s not ‘reformable’.
Aug 7, 2006 - 6:55 am 17. Roger:Great post, doug f. And you’re right, they’re probably not reformable. If I had really thought they were, I’d be back where I was and not at Pajamas Media
Aug 7, 2006 - 7:03 am 18. photoncourier.blogspot.com:The F-16 photo points out another important point: the extreme ignorance of many journalists.
The caption referred to the F-16 firing “missiles”…which were actually flares to confuse enemy AA missiles. It should have been obvious that these objects could not have been missiles, because they were *behind* the airplane. As anyone who ever took a high-school physics class should know, the forward velocity of the missile is added to the forward velocity of the airplane.
Evidently, no one in the Reuters editing chain possessed even this minimal level of knowledge.
Aug 7, 2006 - 7:27 am 19. tcobb:The F-16 photo points out another important point: the extreme ignorance of many journalists.
How very true. Did you catch the story about how the Tanzanian government stopped a shipment of “U-238″ uranium to Iran? I don’t doubt that they stopped a shipment of uranium or (more likely) uranium ore to Iran, but it almost certainly wasn’t U-238, which is useless for building a fission bomb. The whole point of enriching uranium is to increase the concentration of U-235 by getting rid of the U-238, which is approximately as radioactive as granite.
Aug 7, 2006 - 9:23 am 20. Richard Nieporent:As a follow up to my previous comment, I wish to point out this statement made yesterday to Howard Kurtz as reported in Power Line .
KURTZ: hold on, you’re suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it’s fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?
RICKS: Yes, that’s what military analysts have told me.
What is even more disgusting about this canard is that it is not coming from a Reuters reporter but from a Washington Post reporter. The MSM has truly become the enemy!
Aug 7, 2006 - 9:49 am 21. cathyf:If these guys are going to try to compete with the Weekly World News, The Star and the National Enquirer, they are going to have to punch up the entertainment value of their offerings. This is a mature market segment with savvy well-tested competitors already in place.
cathy
Aug 7, 2006 - 10:08 am 22. Jase:Roger, you bitch -> You’ve written the best opinion column of the year, but since you refuse to work with the newspapers & syndicates, there’ll be no Pulitzer for you. Ah wait, now I remember why – they tend to avoid self-criticism. Mmm.
Excellent summary, wonderful piece. I wish all the leading papers would run this (with links) in their OpEd pages next Sunday.
Aug 7, 2006 - 10:50 am 23. RachelBasch:Judith Klinghoffer notes that in the same program Howard Kurtz pointedly ignores these two interesting comments by Brent Sadler:
BRENT SADLER, CNN BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF: I think, Howard, it’s fair to say that many Lebanese have been exercising a form of political correctness here. In the interests of national unity they’re trying to speak with one voice. . . .
But really now, people are beginning to talk out about the way the Hezbollah rocket fire and the eruptions of this conflict is destroying this country. I think we’re going see far more people, if you like, coming out of the woodwork condemning those that don’t agree with the Shia hard-liners, like those who don’t support Hezbollah. The Christians, certainly some of the Sunnis, supporting the voice of Lebanese, who represent the parliamentary majority, that would not want to see what’s happening in south Lebanon, and throughout the country, continue for a minute longer. . . .
SADLER: Well, we do get some of them on camera. The interesting point is that we’re seeing a lot more presence of Hezbollah’s MPs, two of them are in the parliament here giving statements. We’ve had one of them coming on air speaking English.
I’ve been watching Hezbollah since their birth some 25 years ago, almost 25 years ago, they really are learning very quickly the power of the international media that’s here. Once upon a time this city was a no-go capital for journalists like us to come to, during the kidnap years. But Hezbollah is certainly learning — and has learned very well — how to play the media card in getting its message out.
Aug 7, 2006 - 12:21 pm 24. Carl Spackler:1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to The New York Times Stalin loving Walter Duranty.
Then Herbert L. Matthews love affair with Castro.
Peter Arnett shilling for Saddam.
Nothing to see folks, move along, move along…
Aug 7, 2006 - 12:45 pm 25. Orson2:Media bias has become a fundamental tenet of the reporting profession. THE most popular textboook teaching the subject is by Columbia University’s Melvin Mencher – his “News Reporting” has been through nine or more editions, teaching that GOOD REPORTERS TAKE SIDES.
Thus, as doug fputs it: “Because the media believes that there is no ‘better’ side, it willingly allows itself to be used by the ‘worst’ side. It ‘chooses’ to be a voice for the ‘enemy’ simply because it does not so see them. There can never be an ENEMY.”
Or rather the media has decided that the bad guy is White-Euro-US-imperialism (eg, Israel), and therefore the victims of historic oppression can do no wrong. Their coverage fully reflects this committment and its institutionalization.
Which is why I don’t trust the MSM, or as shrinkwrapped calls them, the LSM.
Aug 7, 2006 - 2:43 pm 26. David Thomson:ìIt’s hard to believe Mr. Hajj was not under the full control of that system, whether willingly or not is unclear (possibly even to the photographer himself).î
If nothing else, we know about the Stockholm Syndrome. No photographer is allowed to successfully perform their duties in Lebanon, on a continuous basis, unless they serve the interests of Hezbollah. These thugs will not hesitate to harm somebody who gets in their way. An “accident” can always be arranged.
Aug 7, 2006 - 5:55 pm 27. Carl Spackler:“Thus, as doug fputs it: “Because the media believes that there is no ‘better’ side, it willingly allows itself to be used by the ‘worst’ side. It ‘chooses’ to be a voice for the ‘enemy’ simply because it does not so see them. There can never be an ENEMY.”"
From the PBS panel series Ethics in America, devoted to war coverage, which was taped at Harvard in late 1987.
“Ogletree pushed (Mike) Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something rather than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?
“No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”
Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said.
“I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached.
As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford’s national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.”
Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something?
Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a “Don’t ask me!” gesture, and said, “I don’t know.” He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh – the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd’s reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given.”
Aug 7, 2006 - 5:56 pm 28. onecent:Commonsense would tell you that if your main photographer covering this war is a local Lebanese, then, the pictures will have a bias. Reuters has no clean hands in this. Reuters is notorious in using local stringers in covering the ME. Their editors know this.
It’s our duty as citizens to destroy these Fifth Columns. They are going to cost us our lives eventually.
A start is complaining to organizations like Yahoo that use Reuters that we object to their service. Investor services is probably most sensitive to complaints.
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/comment.cfm
.
Aug 7, 2006 - 7:02 pm 29. geoffb:In these United States of America we consider the people to be sovereign. In the Bill of Rights the things forbidden to government are those that the people need to exercise their sovereignty. “Freedom of the Press” can be looked upon as the right of the people to their own intelligence agencies.
The most important thing to any intelligence agency is to be perceived as credible by the users of their intelligence. If their credibility goes, nothing else they do matters. In recent years the MSM have had their credibility increasingly brought into question. Their reaction is to sweep the problem completely under the rug, shuffle a few top level executives or declare that it was just a few low level staffers that caused all the trouble. Like the cheating husband when caught “Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes”.
These responses do not enhance the MSM’s credibility, they destroy it. They will first have to acknowledge that they have a credibility problem. Then start a public and transparent process to root out the causes of the problem and set up ways to stop it from happening again. All this will have to be subject to massive public scrutiny and comment. Blogs and the Internet could be their salvation in this but they instead see them, not their own actions, as the problem. We have seen much denial and some anger and depression. Still waiting on the bargaining and acceptance.
Aug 8, 2006 - 12:20 pm