Posted on 08/03/2006 6:42:15 AM PDT by Lazamataz
The Photo that Started it All
On the day the Intafada broke out, Tuvia Grossman was riding a taxi to visit the Western Wall. He was unwittingly thrust into the international limelight -- and nearly killed in the process.
On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier is the one who beat him.
The victim's true identity was revealed when Dr. Aaron Grossman of Chicago sent the following letter to the Times:
Regarding your picture on page A5 of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount -- that Palestinian is actually my son, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem, by a mob of Palestinian Arabs, and were severely beaten and stabbed.
That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob.
In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" -- not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs. The "correction" also noted that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City" -- although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.
In response to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, The New York Times reprinted Tuvia Grossman's picture -- this time with the proper caption -- along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters.
Read Tuvia Grossman's in-depth, first-person account of his ordeal, entitled Victim of the Media War. www.aish.com/jewishissues/israeldiary/
The photo of a bloodied Tuvia Grossman became a symbol in the struggle to ensure that Israel receives the fair media coverage that every nation deserves.
In April 2002, a District Court in Paris ordered the French daily newspaper "Liberation" and the Associated Press to pay damages to Grossman in the amount of 4,500 Euro.
The Court condemned the Associated Press for "mispresenting [Grossman] as a member of the Palestinian community," while the court censured "Liberation" for "publishing the litigious picture with a comment edited the same faulty way, giving the picture a meaning and a scope it could not have."
One has to wonder how much disinformation we've been fed before Algore invented the internet, how many of our world views are based on the BS we were spoonfed for fifty years.
Thankfully, I've always been a pig-headed contrarian.
I would say it deserves more than a thread. Everyone in U.S. should read this story.
>>The print and broadcast media are our direct enemy, as assuredly as al-Qaeda is.<<
You are ABSOLUTELY correct.
bttt
Palestinian "resurrections" filmed by Israeli drones, as well. Can't forget the Palis killed by fake artillery rounds, either.
The '92 elections bagging on the VP and the riots that resulted from constantly showing an edited clip of the Rodney King beatings were the epiphanies that caused me to doubt the MSM. Thankfully the net was just coming in around then.
bttt
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