Wednesday, August 9, 2006

I've Been Thinking:

This is a media war.
The media has been involved in wars for a very long time. During WWI the media fabricated atrocity stories. During WWII true life atrocity stories were not believed because of the untruths of the previous War.

For an example, look at Reuters:
Reuters released and has just removed from their files two doctored photo showing the atrocities of the Middle East Conflict. The photos were on the website for media outlets to use. One was a picture of Southern Beirut immediately after Israel had bombed. The other was of an Israeli fighter jet dropping flares but doctored to appear as if it was dropping bombs.

Clear cases of cut and paste, of photo shop and clone programming.
The photographer, Adnan Hajj, was one of the Reuters photographers who photographed the supposed atrocities at Qana. Reuters has suspended him.

Phil Commes, the BBC photo editor, actually said "One man's color balancing is another man's grounds for dismissal."

We the press must be very cautious.
We cannot play into the games of the propagandists.
There is nothing wrong with having an opinion, but facts are facts - they are not open to distortion or fabrication.
War is atrocious enough, it needs no embellishment.