Posted on 05/14/2004 10:43:16 AM PDT by Eurotwit
The editor of the Daily Mirror has resigned after admitting its alleged Iraqi abuse pictures had been "a hoax".
Piers Morgan's decision came as the paper "apologised unreservedly" for printing the pictures.
The editor, one of the best known faces in Fleet Street, had earlier brushed away growing pressure on him to quit.
The Queen's Lancashire Regiment, subject of the abuse allegations, had said the pictures were "utter and complete nonsense".
Military figures for the regiment said the photos are fake and that the newspaper should apologise.
In a hard-hitting press conference at Fulwood Barracks, Preston, key figures for the regiment said the Daily Mirror had increased the danger faced by British troops serving in Iraq.
Col. David Black, a former commanding officer of the QLR, said: "(They are) almost a recruiting poster for al Qaeda and every other terrorist organisation."
They did not call for the resignation of the Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, but said the board of governors and shareholders should put pressure on the paper to cooperate fully with an ongoing inquiry.
The reputation of the regiment had been "unjustly sullied", they added.
Brig Geoff Sheldon said: "It's time that the ego of one editor is measured against the life of the soldier.
A lance corporal shows the difference in Army guns
"
He added: "These photographs have done enormous damage to the country and Army. The danger of the loss of life has been exacerbated.
"It is not a parlour game."
They said the photographs had served as a "red herring" for any legitimate allegations of torture.
Soldiers serving in Iraq felt "anger, upset and hurt" at the publication of the photographs, they added.
But the regiment had received support from the Army and politicians.
Mr Morgan, asserted Thursday that the government had not proven that the photos were fake.
The regiment put on show old rifles used in the Daily Mirror pictures and compared them with new rifles which are currently being used in Basra. They also had on display two different trucks to highlight the discrepancies.
The fake truck was found at a Territorial Army base in England, though it is not known who the soldiers who took the photographers are, or which regiment they are from.
The military men strongly criticised the photographers for their "disgraceful behaviour in a most ignoble episode."
Col. Black added: "This regiment is old and fine. It is 350-years-old. We have weathered worst storms than this."
Just breaking on Sky.
He should be hanged for treason!
Oh, wait. No I don't.
LOL!
Didn't they also show photos of the alleged source of this story and one of the guys who recognized himself behind the blacked-out face said it was nonsense?
Boston Globe editor next?
Do we hold our breath waiting for the Boston Glub guy to quit?
Well said! We need to try that in the USA.
Now what about the editor of the Boston Globe, whose paper also ran fake pictures.
Euro I feel cheated I thought Brits were doing same thing like we Americans we doing
GOOD I hope he doesn't show up on Fleet Street anymore pehaps he had job offer from CNN
I love that line.
There's still some decency left in England, even on the left. It's very rare in America, however. The Globe still hasn't even apologized or fully admitted that the photos were fakes.
Did Janet Reno step down after incinerating about 70 innocent children? Of course not. She is a shameless Democrat, who believes that ideology trumps truth any day of the week. So does Martin Barron.
He WANTED the photos to be real, they fit his worldview, so he never tried to authenticate them.
In fact, his lesson from this is probably "this stuff really does happen all the time, but I happened to get fake pics."
Paging the Boston Globe...
England still has the Tower ....throw this clown in it.
When will the editor of the Boston Globe take the high road and resign?
Oops, drunk again!
Exactly.
The British have such a classey way of verbally b*tch-slapping people. You have to love them.
Good news.
Piers Morgan's decision came as the paper "apologised unreservedly" for printing the pictures.
The editor, one of the best known faces in Fleet Street, had earlier brushed away growing pressure on him to quit.
The Queen's Lancashire Regiment, subject of the abuse allegations, had said the pictures were "utter and complete nonsense".
Military figures for the regiment said the photos are fake and that the newspaper should apologise.
I don't see why he resigned. This guy just prints what the tabloid press always do -- print BS. These guys [Mirror et al.] didn't have any credibility before they printed the pictures.
Love the graphic! Is it fair game?
Mirror
BBC
New York Times
USA Today
...
all not to be trusted.
The media needs to be disciplined. Large large fines.
NO LOSS.
Thank you Texkat.
I just heard on Sky that the Army is demanding a full page appology.
Cheers.
VICTORY in the WAR ON ERROR?
There are a LOT of British papers that have retractions to print. If you search news.google.com you will see that same editorial ran in a lot of British papers yesterday still holding out hope that they were genuine after being pronounced fakes.
Here was the copy I posted to FR (the headline should be the same for all of them on Google):
No evidence photos faked - editor (partisan editors in UK deny government inquiry results).
And I'm sure the regiment has fought tougher enemies. Yes, I meant to say that--enemies.
Waiting for the follow-up. Prosecution of the photographer and actors and their accomplices.
VICTORY in the WAR ON ERROR?
Wonderful! You are a better and more truthful headline writer than any of them!
The terminology used by the press when describing the prison story, "vile" "abuse" and "torture" were applied to the wrong story. Those terms (and many more) were all brought into focus when we saw some or all of the horrific beheading of Mr. Berg.
Still believe that the brutal murder of Berg shook the public and will bring discourse back to a true perspective of who are the true villains in this War on Terrorism.
Defenestration PING!
...if this keeps up I may have to change my username to the King Of Ping!
* - ...if we are to take known psychopathic murderers at their word. I contemplated the Nick Berg video today. There are at least 2 unseen accomplices behind that video (the 2 who shot the video using 2 camcorders). They may have used two cameras so that they were sure to capture this event (they didn't want a retake using a corpse like the Pakistanis did with Daniel Pearle). I got to thinking about the mentality of an eager young (15-25) year old... So eager to be involved that maybe both cameramen wanted thier work to be seen. It is also possible that Cameraman #1 got sick and looked away necessating the use of Cameraman #2's complete shot of the event.
When photo manipulation turns malicious
Marion Independent Journal
March 22, 2004
Katie Haftner
*SNIP*
This point was apparently not lost on the creator of the Kerry-Fonda composite. Especially during the presidential primaries, with scrutiny being given to Kerry's antiwar activities in the early 1970s, images like the one showing him with Fonda can have a strong influence on the people who see them.
"What if that photo had floated around two days before the general election and there wasn't time to say it's not true?" said Ken Light, who took the original photograph of Kerry - which did not include Fonda - at an antiwar rally in 1971.
Light, 52, who teaches photojournalism and ethics at the University of California at Berkeley, said he was surprised by the swiftness with which the doctoring occurred. For 30 years, the original photo was buried in his files. He found it a month ago when he was going through old photos. In view of Kerry's presidential bid, Light thought the photo might be of general interest and sent it to Corbis, the online stock photo agency. A week later the composite surfaced.
"I was totally unprepared for what happened," he said.
Owen Franken, 57, a photographer in Paris who took the original photograph of Fonda in 1972, was so incensed by the fakery that he said he was "trying to figure out how to sue people about it." And officials at Corbis, which sells licenses for both of the originals, are investigating the possibility of copyright violations.
As a British countryman has said here on FR, England has essentially done away with the death penalty (even for treason).
Sad really because Lord Haw Haw was hanged in England after WWII. There is speculation that he would have only been sentenced to jail had he returned to America.
Axis Sally was sentenced to jail and later worked as an American school teacher.
"Tokio Rose" (there never was a propaganda broadcaster by that name but then neither is Baghdad Bob his broadcast name either). I believe that a woman was convicted of treason and jailed but I believe that she received a full presidential pardon (under Carter?).
...were fakes (staged images of urination, porn site rape images, etc.) propagated by the media....
Which brings up very good questions for the Mirror and the Boston Globe, questions that we should (as good little FReepers) pose to them. When will they identify and publish the names of the hoax perps? Who failed to authenticate the photos? Who authorized the use of the photos?
Just as the Partisan Press demands to know how far up the chain of command the prison "scandal" goes, we want to know how far up the chain of command the hoax scandal goes!
Anyone with links?
Uh, oh...
The image barely existed on FR (it was deleted almost as soon as it was posted and then heavily monitored). The left almost certainly circulated the image afterwards to cause problems.
It NEVER DID see print in any hardcopy publication. Snopes.com still has the image hosted on their website in violation of Corbis and the compite creator's copyrights. Corbis cannot license the image because they do not own it (and they do not want it seen) and the composite creator cannot license it because he does not own the source images but his involvement in the creation of the image does give him certain rights. The creator could lose all of his rights if a lawsuit were brought and a judge ruled that the photos (including the composite) are the property of Corbis, but not until then.
The media was sure to talk up the very existance of a fake Fonda-Kerry photo to put the seed of doubt into the minds of anyone who saw ANY Fonda-Kerry photos (Snopes.com even hosts 2 separate rumors about it, one true and one false).
The media DID NOT talk up the existance of fake (or questionable) photos from England (the urination images) and the porn site images from the arab press (that later appeared in the Boston Globe after they were already PROVEN to be fakes).
Maybe if the media hadn't taken a partisan edge to presenting this story the editors at the Boston Globe would have clearly known in advance that they were being presented with fake photos circulated by a member of the Nation of Islam.
FYI, there was also a fake photo of a young George W. Bush cropped into the genuine image of Fonda seated with Kerry. No media site EVER complained about that one. It was created with the same intent as the Fonda-Kery hoax, a gag. A genuine image of the 2 of them had already been discovered so the fake was not a case of "until something better comes along".
Let those people working for the government earn their keep. If they are going to give good taxpayer dollars to artists who photograph people peeing on each other then they can be the ones to match up the photographer to the hoax.
I'm not saying that it is an NEA grant winner who took the shots but at least it's a start (especially considering the monolithic politics of the cliquish art community).
"It" is a conspiracy.
Multiple people were involved in the staging of the images in addition to the photographer. The editor may or may not have been aware of the ruse.
We have at minimum 2 participants (and a camera with a timer). Two people is a conspiracy.
So now we must discuss the nature of the conspiracy. It was designed to tarnish the reputation of the military. The British military was immediately impacted but it also serves to tarnish the military in general.
Are we aware of such propaganda efforts on other occassions in the past 10 years with regards to the British military? Tony Blair was Prime Minister through the 90s as well.
If not then we are to assume that these images were designed to tarnish the reputation of the British military and the war in Iraq. Who benefits from damaging the image of the British military while they are engaged in a war? The enemy.
So we have a conspiracy of sympathizers to the other side in a war who designed to provided aid and comfort to the enemy in the form of propaganda.
When I claim that the antiwar movement is "AntiAmerican", this is the sort of activity that backs up that claim.
Identify the players (in a court of law) and then you can tie them to the newspaper.
This jerk was the victim of his own making. Hardly malicious unless you consider how happy he was when he saw the pictures and thought of all the harm it would do to troop and citizen moral.
Nope he is writing his acceptance speech for the Pulitzer Prize.
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