Media in action
The subject is the infamous footage that seemed to show Israeli soldiers shooting a boy cowering from crossfire next to a building, while his father tried to shield him. The sequence went world-wide like a firestorm, and is now the object of a lawsuit against the French news network that paid for and distributed the video. The purpose of the lawsuit is to force the network to release the original raw footage, which it has refused to do. Imagine that.
The upshot of the case so far seems to be that news footage out of Palestinian areas is typically staged, a kind of Palestinian propaganda movie industry, and provided to anti-Israeli news outlets (which means all of them in the Islamic world, the BBC in Britain, virtually all of them on the European continent, and some in the US.) for network distribution. The obvious implication is that such reports should be assumed to be media-promulgated garbage until independently verified. This lawsuit indicates what it takes to get verification from the original source, in this case after 7 years of trying.
Similar problems have plagued US news reports from Iraq because of heavy reliance on local paid stringers, without due consideration that they may be out to grind a sectarian axe or that they have simply learned to provide the kind of story and slant the liberal media will pay for. A story with a US reporter's byline is often the unverified product of a paid local stringer. The problem can also be entirely in-house, as in the case of CNN. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at the network, finally admitted that CNN gave Saddam Hussein's regime favorable coverage (e.g., covering up atrocities known to CNN) for about 12 years ending in 2003 as a quid pro quo for allowing CNN to maintain its "news" operation in Iraq. In other words, CNN for those years functioned a worldwide propaganda outlet for one of the most vicious regimes in world history. Journalism at its best.
The proof of how abominable the major media's performance has been is simply this: The turnaround in Iraq, and the reasons it has occurred, are neither surprising nor mysterious to anyone who has followed the dispatches of Michael Yon or J.D. Johannes or Michael Totten. These are not professional journalists, but merely honest analysts and chroniclers who are on-scene, and who have called it as they saw it happening. But if you have depended on the NYT, CBS, NPR, et al., for your information, then the shift is so unexpected and anomalous that you probably have great difficulty believing that it could possibly be happening. Nothing in the major media's coverage of the war would have prepared you for success.
Byron
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
The upshot of the case so far seems to be that news footage out of Palestinian areas is typically staged, a kind of Palestinian propaganda movie industry, and provided to anti-Israeli news outlets (which means all of them in the Islamic world, the BBC in Britain, virtually all of them on the European continent, and some in the US.) for network distribution. The obvious implication is that such reports should be assumed to be media-promulgated garbage until independently verified. This lawsuit indicates what it takes to get verification from the original source, in this case after 7 years of trying.
Similar problems have plagued US news reports from Iraq because of heavy reliance on local paid stringers, without due consideration that they may be out to grind a sectarian axe or that they have simply learned to provide the kind of story and slant the liberal media will pay for. A story with a US reporter's byline is often the unverified product of a paid local stringer. The problem can also be entirely in-house, as in the case of CNN. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at the network, finally admitted that CNN gave Saddam Hussein's regime favorable coverage (e.g., covering up atrocities known to CNN) for about 12 years ending in 2003 as a quid pro quo for allowing CNN to maintain its "news" operation in Iraq. In other words, CNN for those years functioned a worldwide propaganda outlet for one of the most vicious regimes in world history. Journalism at its best.
The proof of how abominable the major media's performance has been is simply this: The turnaround in Iraq, and the reasons it has occurred, are neither surprising nor mysterious to anyone who has followed the dispatches of Michael Yon or J.D. Johannes or Michael Totten. These are not professional journalists, but merely honest analysts and chroniclers who are on-scene, and who have called it as they saw it happening. But if you have depended on the NYT, CBS, NPR, et al., for your information, then the shift is so unexpected and anomalous that you probably have great difficulty believing that it could possibly be happening. Nothing in the major media's coverage of the war would have prepared you for success.
Byron
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Pajamas Media has followed the case of the al-Dura taping, in which the French network France 2 has tried to defend itself against charges of staging an incident which touched off an intifada. In that defense, France 2 has essentially told the court that all other news media does the same in its reporting from the Middle East:
So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded:
"These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth."
When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Dura in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”
These remarks serve as an important prelude to considering the France2 rushes that will be shown in court in Paris on November 14 in the Enderlin France2 vs. Philippe Karsenty defamation case. These tapes were filmed by Talal abu Rahmah on September 30, 2000, and for seven years, Enderlin has claimed that the tapes prove him right and show the boy in such unbearable death throes that he cut them out of his report. But several experts who have seen the tapes (this author included) claim that the only scene of al Dura that Enderlin cut was the final scene where he seems alive and well; and still more disturbingly the rest of the rushes are filled with staged scenes.
posted by Byron | Sunday, November 11, 2007
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