Posted on 11/14/2006 11:44:07 AM PST by Brian C. Ledbetter
Early on in the Lebanon war, there was a photograph published by both U.S. News and World Report and Time Magazine, which according to captions published with the picture was of a burning Israeli jet, shot down by Hezbullah missiles. The blogosphere was quick to call B.S. on the photo, and the widely-circulated story was that the photograph was actually that of a tire dump.
Well, it seems that the photographer responsible for taking the photograph, Bruno Stevens, has finally sounded off on Lightstalkers, explaining the photograph and telling the true story of how things ended up the way they did. He also notes that the site was not a tire dump, but was rather an old Lebanese Army base that had either been hit by an Israeli jet, or by a misfired Hezbullah rocket (both possibilites he appears to have recounted in his original captions). The key point that Bruno makes is that, while he sent in a fairly balanced caption to accompany the photograph, the wire services rewrote the caption completely, changing the pertinent facts surrounding the story. Where have we heard that before?
Bruno's story is available in full at Lightstalkers, and I recommend checking it out, even though it is mostly written as a response to someone who has been alleging that he was somehow covering up a civilian massacre. My favorite part, and the one that's the most damning of Photo Editors everywhere, is this:
This caption clearly says that there is no proof that an Israeli jet had been shot down and that the objective was indeed to destroy a legitimate military target. ...A week later TIME published this image shot at the same time as the first: They choose to caption it this way (I had NO control in this matter), they HAD my original caption: “The wreckage of a downed Israeli jet that was targeting Hizballah trucks billows smoke behind a Hizballah gunman in Kfar Chima, near Beirut. Jet fuel set the surrounding area ablaze.”I'm beginning to think that a major shakeup needs to happen in the editorial desks of just about every wire service. For this to continually happen means that somebody sitting in the Editor's chair is either (a) deliberately trying to shape the news, a gross violation of the public trust placed in them, or they are (b) too completely incompetent to distinguish facts and circumstances from the photographic and captional evidence presented to them.
Bruno, my hat's off to you for sharing your story so openly.
It's very common, and so are misleading headlines.
News stories by the wire reporters are also often written to twist the facts.
your experiences pretty much sum it up - they lie, distort, fabricate, and omit to suit their story needs, and it is the RULE, not the exception.
The amazing thing is that picture show a rocket launcher there, thus making it a legitamate target, but the MSM covered that up.
And then we saw the following headline:
"After Zarqawi, No Clear Path in Weary Iraq."
...from irresponsible journalism being practiced by organizations such as Newsweek,Time, etc..
Here in Milwaukee I've heard stories from former public officials that the newspaper would hold a file of quotes for days, weeks, months or longer and later "timeshift" them into current news stories to provide point-counterpoint. Sometimes entirely out of context.
Once when confronted about it, the editor confirmed that this was standard and accepted practice.
An example:
Kitten abuse on the rise
11/14/06
Kitten abuse is on the rise.
"Something must be done to stop this" say kitten advocates.
"We don't feel that kitten provide any positive benefits to the population" said the mayor.
Original context from 5 years prior:
"Can kittens be used therapeutically to calm racial tensions in the prison population?" - reporter.
"We don't feel that kittens provide and positive benefits to the population" - mayor.
Not quite the exact incident, but the real details were equally blatant.
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