"America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry," Editor & Publisher, offers another attempt by the media to discredit/deny the claims of online writers, whose work has exposed the manipulation of written and photographic news by media personnel across Lebanon. To summarize the problems with this editorial, it's essentially built upon one big, fat strawman, presenting--either out of ignorance or with credulity--flimsy accounts of bloggers' claims, supported by beams of worthless anecdotes, and some of its own unsupported proclamations.
In Defense of War Photographers
While some criticism is warranted, the current controversy over manipulated or staged pictures from Lebanon has been fueled by speculative, unfounded, or politically-driven charges that have tainted all of the brave photographers who cover conflict in the Middle East.
By Greg Mitchell
(August 22, 2006) -- With most others in the mainstream silent, I rise here in support of the overwhelming number of press photographers in the Middle East who bravely, under horrid conditions, in recent weeks have sent back graphic and revealing pictures from the war zones, only to be smeared, as a group, by rightwing bloggers aiming, as always, to discredit the media as a whole.
This amounts to a clever ad populum/appeal to authority hybrid argument, with which the author, despite not being a member of the canonical mainstream press--that which is being "smeared"--attempts to link himself to the "accepted" news gatekeepers, while (as will be addressed below) hoping to portray "rightwing" bloggers as conspiracy nuts. This broad condemnation, and the conspiracy theories, lodged against photographers in war zones -- who are risking their lives while bloggers risk nothing but carpal tunnel syndrome -- needs to be refuted.
First, he equivocates with his use of the term "conspiracy theory," which has a life of its own, aside from its mere denotation. The author's use of the term is accurate insofar as it describes bloggers' claims of a conspiracy to misrepresent by members of the media, but takes a sinister swipe to infer its other "the CIA killed JFK" meaning--the meaning people tend to associate with wacko Ruby Ridge/Waco types. His use of the term takes on more of an ad hominem shape as the author further elaborates (see below).
Second, he throws in a red herring in the form of a fallacious appeal to emotion, by attempting to introduce the risk of life as relevant to bloggers' claims. Pointing out that standing so close to Hezbollah fighters is dangerous might have merit in a discussion, but is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Indeed, one American photographer in Lebanon, Bryan Denton, often cited by the blogs as backing their claims, has now apologized for his earlier "irresponsible" assertions at the Lightstalkers site, and stated flatly, "Any one out there who is trying to politicize that is just plain sick, and is moving this further away from the real issue at hand. There are hundreds of photographers working here now. Don't let a few bad apples take the attention away from what the REAL story is, because by the looks of the blogs, THAT is exactly what is happening." Don't expect to find those second thoughts on any of the blogs. Introducing this tidbit is a particularly interesting choice by the author. For those unfamiliar with it, Denton posted a forthright denunciation of many photographers' propensities toward misrepresentation, staging and so forth--in short, the things being claimed by bloggers. He stuck his neck out by posting this "insider" comment at a photographers' online community.
Following almost unanimous condemnation on the forums, he issued an apology. He did not disclaim what he had previously stated; he only apologized--arguably in the interest of maintaining some credibility among his peers. This looks a lot more like "communal reinforcement" than a man arbitrarily deciding to retract statements. And once again, the author uses a red herring--this time, it's a guy apologizing--to attempt to deflect whatever statements were presented as true. An apology has no bearing on a statement's veracity. Which is not to say that this is much ado about nothing. Obviously, Adnan Hajj, the Reuters photographer who doctored at least two images, deserved to be dismissed.
What criteria brought the author to this conclusion? What made this particular action so "obviously" deserving? Was it the evidence unearthed by the bloggers who were doing editorial work for the overburdened Reuters team? Based on the tone of this article, the author harbors little faith in the ability of bloggers to find malfeasance and identify it.
Could his confidence be, more probably, a result of Reuters' eventual admission to the fraud? Juxtaposing "obviously [Hajj] deserved to be dismissed" with further standards of evidence he presents (see below), it becomes clearer that the author prefers to allow Reuters and other MSM members to decide what is accurate, instead of relying upon the merits of the evidence. A handful of other pictures snapped by others warrant investigation. Big ol' chubby strawman. Here he fully misrepresents the case. A "handful", if taken literally, is five. Figuratively, it might be a half-dozen, or even ten. However, the shots being disputed are well into the scores in number, emanating from dozens of discrete photographic locations. The author either intentionally misleads, or is comfortable making broad assertions without having investigated the myriad questionable photographs and captions. In a few cases, caption information was wrong or misleading, and required correction. In addition, the controversy has sparked an overdue discussion -- some of it here at E&P -- on the credibility of all photography in the Photoshop age and the wide use of local stringers abroad in a time of cutbacks in supervision.
But, in general, the charges against the photographers, and their news organizations, have been hysterical, largely unfounded, and politically driven, while at times raising valid questions, such as what represents "staging."
"Hysterical," "largely unfounded" and "politically driven"? These are staggeringly sweeping claims that I must assume will be addressed completely in part two of this opinion by the author. I suspect that the third of these accusations might prove true, if the author's definition of "politically driven" follows the lines of "intent on exposing examples of politically motivated misrepresentations and fabrications by the media." Time does not permit a point by point documentation of the dozens of ludicrous, or at least completely unproven, examples of doctored or staged or otherwise manipulated photos on the Web.
Despite my earlier reservations, I won't remove the gravedigging spade from the author's hand; he can have his self-appointed "mainstream" designation--grudge-free. To me, this "time does not permit" statement openly illustrates what I see as a symptom of the MSM's terrible illness. The media have an apparent belief that it's better to be wrong and/or inaccurate and/or misrepresentative and FAST than to be correct and accurate and forthright and not so fast.
As has been illustrated in Reuters' own excuses for distributing the clearly doctored smoke-cloud shots by Hajj, even the most "prestigious" news purveyors appear to subscribe to this perspective. Senior Reuters editor Paul Holmes, in-charge of the company's standards and ethics, said this of the faked shots: "It was handled by someone on a very busy day at a more junior level than we would wish for in ideal circumstances". In other words, if it's a busy day, accuracy is less important for Reuters than timeliness. Paramount, according to the news agency itself, is the need to rush the news--accurate or not. Have no fear, I will soon return to this subject, but in the meantime, feel free to plunge into the blogosphere. If you go deeply enough, you may feel you are back on the Grassy Knoll.
Here's where, with his "Grassy Knoll", he uses the earlier equivocation fallacy to launch an ad hominem attack, attempting to compare astute bloggers to wacko nut-jobs. He continues by referencing (to my shock, I admit) the site of the most thorough documentation of photo staging at Qana, as if to infer that EU Referendum is an example of this "Grassy Knoll". One of the most-linked sites in this controversy, EU Referendum, goes so far as to suggest that a kind of Hollywood "film-set" was improvised at the site of the Qana killings "for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media." Many of the blogs routinely refer to The New York Times, AP, CNN and other news organizations as being in league with Hezbollah or at least "anti-American."
Just this morning, a blogger emailed me his latest "scoop." Remember those photos a few days ago showing "Made in USA" signs posted here and there amid the rubble of South Beirut? This fellow is convinced that an AP photog wrote the signs, in a certain font, on his computer -- and pasted them into his image.
One problem with the theory: E&P happens to have photos taken by others that show exactly the same thing  but the blogger will no doubt now claim that all of these highly competitive photogs conspired on this. Enter the first of several anecdotal tales of the author's encounters with what he presumably sees as evidence relevant to his article. In this case, he refers to an email from an unnamed source, in which the sender posits his own photo manipulation theory. The author then refutes the theory. This is worse than a mere strawman. At least with a bona-fide strawman, one can actually verify that the straws being used to build the man have come from somewhere other than the author's mind. Not only does he invoke and refute an unverifiable theory, but bases it all on an anecdote.
To boot, he apparently expects his readers to accept it as evidence of his thesis that bloggers' claims are "speculative, unfounded, or politically-driven". As it is being used, it represents a faulty generalization. The author appears to be attempting to link an email from some unknown dude with the subjects being criticized of his article. The cherry on this sundae is yet another fallacious promclamation: "the blogger will no doubt now claim that all of these highly competitive photogs conspired on this." Why attempt to argue with the author when he appears to be able to do it all on his own?
Often, the allegations of bogus photos amounts to nothing more than this: Showing, say, one picture of a badly-damaged car in Lebanon next to another shot of a totally destroyed auto, both said to be hit by Israeli bombs. Aha! Obviously the one that was only badly-damaged must have gotten wrecked in some other way. The possibility that one vehicle suffered a direct hit and the other a glancing blow -- or that different Israeli missiles were used -- apparently does not occur to these people.
Again, he uses a strawman to commit another anecdotal fallacy, by supplying an unverifiable example, and refuting it. Bravo. One day last week I spent an entertaining ten minutes examining a long thread at one blog in which most of the posters were convinced that, for some unfathomable reason, a very dark-skinned Lebanese man in one photo MUST have been pasted into the scene -- for everyone knows (?) Arabs are never that dark.
And once more, we've got a monstrous strawman. In this case, it is terribly difficult to accept that the author is truly sincere about his analysis. Despite the fact that it's yet another example of a useless anecdote, I will attempt to address the situation to which he appears to be referring. In the photo, there's a black guy in a crowd of Arabs, whose head has been apparently cut and pasted over a Muslim woman's.
In my opinion, it's completely obvious that it's a fake. The point, though, is that the author tries to get his reader to believe that bloggers were calling "fake" because the guy was too dark-skinned. I never even encountered such a claim in my own reading; however, assuming the author indeed found such claims on his own, he must've had to dig pretty deep, with blinders strapped firmly to his temples, to avoid the much simpler and more powerful argument that it's a guy's HUGE head on a scarf-wearing woman's body.
Keep in mind, in considering all of these charges, that almost without exception, the bloggers are basing their comments on photos posted on the Web in compressed jpeg form, with little true detail possible. So when they write, for example, about people or props being "planted" at the site of an explosion -- the only evidence for this being the apparent lack of dust on their surface -- remember that sharp detail and true surface texture is not visible in Web photos.
Here is what I see as an attempt to argue from ignorance. He appears to claim "We can't know for sure that there are details only visible on the original images, therefore, no analysis can be accurate." Sorry, but this is simply disingenuous. While many details are unavailable in the small and compressed JPEGs available, these details aren't what are being singled out by critics. By this logic, no web photograph could ever be said to represent what it purports to represent, since we don't have access to the original image, in its RAW format.
He's willfully misrepresenting the situation here, since the instances to which he seems to refer involve monochromatic dust scenes, the only exception to the grey-brown being single conspicuously colorful toys, in several shots--most by the same photographer. Here's one example:
What's conveniently ignored by the author are the following shots of a guy either packing or unpacking his booty, then carrying the toys to or from the scene. Note that he is carrying the same Minnie Mouse toy as in the above shot.
Sometimes it goes beyond mere quacking and acting like one; if it is a duck, it is a duck.
Here's just one typical example of blog hysteria in their attacks on what some of them call "fauxtography."
An image captured by one of The New York Times' most acclaimed photographers, Tyler Hicks, that appeared in the paper and in a gallery at its Web site, showed a young man being pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed building after the Israeli attack on Qana that killed at least 28, including 16 or more children. Eagled-eyed bloggers soon found, on other news sites, images of the same man darting about the same disaster scene, trying to rescue people.
So, in their usual manner, they put 1 and 1 together and got 2 much: One blog after another charged that this man, after doing his rescue work, was planted on the pile, as a bomb victim, by Hezbollah, probably with the cooperation of Tyler Hicks, who then sent the manipulated photo around the world. The Times, as usual, was denounced by the rightwing bloggers for pro-terrorist and/or anti-American bias.
Even the popular, non-political site Gawker joined in, under the headline, "Times War Photos Artfully Staged, Directed."
Well, there was, indeed, something wrong with the Times presentation. On the Web, though not in print, it suggested that the man had been blasted in the Israeli attack. In fact, the Times quickly found out -- and corrected its Web caption -- that the man fell down and got hurt in his rescue efforts.
Let me offer my congratulations to the author for adding a point-of-reference here that can be actually used to objectively evaluate his claims.
However, first of all, the judgement of the relative speed with which the Times corrected its caption is entirely subjective. Second, the point to be found here is that the Times offered a false story with no apparent explanation for it. Then they somehow gained instant access to the true story--that which had inexplicably eluded them previously. Where did this interpretation of the image come from? Why didn't the original caption come from the same place? Also, what is it about this new source of "accurate" caption info that makes it more reliable than the original source of information?
Bloggers like me are saying that an institutional bias makes attending to such details--such as those irrepressible misers known as truth and accuracy--less important when the news presented supports the MSM perspective. We claim that a fallacious bout of wishful thinking encourages MSM members to falsely attribute news items, permit staging of photos, and so on. Herein lies the problem--conspiracy or not. This simple explanation for the chronology was too much for some of the bloggers who continued questioning the incident, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Bloggers continued questioning the incident? Once the Times owned up to the "error" as discovered by its proxy editors in the blogosphere, new questions arose, such as those mentioned earlier. These questions persist.
As far as "all the evidence to the contrary", the author again shows his devoted faith in the MSM to provide the last word in matters of controversy. The Times has presented another version of the events depicted in the photos; now this version is the truth.
In the estimation of our author, the Times has a new story, and he's sticking to it.
Never mind that the shot still appears quite staged, and is inconsistent with the caption's newest claim. Why would an injured individual remove his cap and tuck it neatly to his side. And, being injured to the point that he cannot even lift his head (his eyes are closed, and his face dons a grimace), why in Allah's name is his buddy yanking the poor kid by the arm like that? Others in the mainstream keep citing it too. As recently as this past Sunday, a Boston Herald editorial still had the man in the Hicks photo posing for the camera, then getting up and running around. It said the Times had "issued a correction" -- without mentioning that it related to the caption about how he got hurt, not about it being a bogus photo.
Aside from the Herald, who are these "others in the mainstream"? When pigs either fly, or are eaten by the guys in this photo, only then will I believe that the MSM is on the case. But all of this was inevitable. Many bloggers appear ignorant of time-stamping and the fact that photos are often posted on Web sites out of sequence.
Talk about beating a dead straw-horse. Sheesh.
Another revealing example (there are dozens) concerns the statements of a young U.S. photographer in Beirut named Bryan Denton. On Aug. 11, he posted a comment on a discussion board at the important online meeting place for photojournalists, Lightstalkers.
Dozens? Easy there, fella. Why don't we start with maybe a "handful", and proceed from there?
The photographers, by then, were already discussing charges of dead Lebanese children being displayed for the cameras in a stagey way. Timothy Fadek, whose photos have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine and dozens of other top publications, had posted on Aug. 8 that when he covered the Qana air strike he twice saw a rescuer raising "a dead child to a photographer, and in anger and distress, shouted something in Arabic which I didn't understand. But his message was clear, that he was very angry and vented his anger to the media (the world)."
Another photog, Stuart Isett, asked, referring to rescuers displaying the body of one child over and over: "How are the pictures misleading? The child is dead and the subject was showing this to the cameras -- that's how any intelligent reader would view these images. The man in the image has every right to show this dead child to the world -- this happens all the time in terrible situations. "What this is all about, is an attempt by right wing blogs to muddy the waters and somehow claim, like Michele Malkin and Rush Limbaugh have, that Qana and other civilians [sic] deaths in Lebanon are staged."
When did they claim this? This is another perfect example of the MSM mentality. Despite being unable to verify the veracity of this statement, the author quotes some (abitrary) guy as support for the story. Never mind that what he is claiming is probably false. "He said it, and it fits my worldview, so . . . ."
He goes straight from an appeal to authority ("Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine and dozens of other top publications") to quoting some random guy. The irony is how his appeal to authority rings circular. By citing examples of what most would agree to be part of the MSM, he is begging the question. "Bloggers claim the MSM is corrupt. Well, a member of the MSM has this to say about the issue."
So part of his evidence against the claimed MSM bias is that a member of the MSM says the MSM is not biased. Ah-ha. While he's at it, the author might want to interview Kofi Annan for his take on corruption within the ranks of the UN.
Then, on August 11, Denton posted a comment on Lightstalkers that got the rightwing blogosphere in a dither. When he later denounced them for politicizing it, however, they were silent.
Wrong. "They" rightly assume that he cowered to the pressure, as would be expected. As was previously mentioned, nothing in his apology did anything to change what he previously professed to be true. He does appear to be understandably upset that his "stand" on photo staging was adopted by bloggers skeptical of the MSM, whose political leanings tend toward the right. Much more on this in Part II of this column, tomorrow. I'm holding my breath, while breathing.
|
