And neither should Hezbollah.
After years of watching car-swarming Palestinians holding up entrails for the cameras, the suggestion of Hezbollah scheduling a few corpse photo-ops doesn't faze me.
Tim Rutten of the LA Times takes a look at Lebanon photo-doping and the U.S. news media's refusal to seriously examine the issue:
There are, however, two problems here, and they're the reason this controversy shouldn't be allowed to sputter to its inglorious conclusion just yet: One of these has to do with the scope of what strongly appears to be wider fabrication in the photojournalism Reuters and other news agencies are obtaining from their freelancers in Lebanon. The other is the U.S. news media's grudging response to the revelation of Hajj's misconduct and its utter lack of interest in exploring whether his is a unique or representative case.Thus far, only a handful of relatively brief stories on this affair have appeared in major American papers. The Times picked up one from the Washington Post, which focused mainly on the politics of Johnson's website. The New York Times, which ran one of Hajj's photos on its front page Saturday, reported that it has published eight of his pictures since 2003, but none were altered. It then went on to quote other papers about steps they take to detect fraudulent images. No paper has taken up the challenge of determining whether there's anything dodgy about the flow of freelance photos Reuters and other news agencies — including the Associated Press, which also transmitted images made by Hajj — are sending out of tormented Lebanon.
And they wonder why the polls continue to show that the American public doesn't trust them to accurately report the news.
Posted by floridacracker at August 12, 2006 07:54 PMWhether by incompetence or willful transmittal of disinformation, our MSM no longer serves us. Who it serves exactly is open to debate - I have some ideas on that - but we all suffer and so does democracy when the so-called "Fourth Estate" fails to inform with accuracy or acts as a Fifth Column.
Someone mentioned a Mark Twain quote the other day:
"If you do not read a newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed."
If only Mark Twain could see Reuters, AP, Rather, and the rest of this shady "profession" today!
Posted by: tfhr at August 12, 2006 11:51 PMYou nailed it tfhr. I was thinking exactly the same thing last night. You came along and confirmed it.
Have yourself a great weekend.
Posted by: Trambo at August 13, 2006 02:39 AMThanks - we stole that stuff off of you using our NSA brain scan, now available to all Verizon customers. Mr. Rove told me to post it - I'm glad you didn't mind.
Probably the most amazing thing in all of this is that, as Donnah points out, the rest of the media turns a blind eye! I just can't understand how, in a supposedly competitive environment, one media outlet doesn't just destroy another one for carrying on as Reuters, et al., have done. Incredible.
Posted by: tfhr at August 13, 2006 04:57 AMAs you stated, they act as a Fifth Column now.
Why? I'm thinking they saw the Vietnam era as their 'golden moment in the limelight' when they brought down a sitting president and now see the US goverment as the enemy, moreso when its a Republican one.
Exposed for what they mis-report by the 'net' their lapses are diseminated to a wide audience, lies and the outright misrepresentation of what actually occured can now be seen by more than just the 'local audience' the newspaper has for its circulation base.
Twain was a font of accurate wit in his time and his truths are still accurate.
Yes, I still cannot fathom why they would be so insane as to continue lieing when exposed on what appears to be a weekly, sometimes daily basis.