Photojournalism in Crisis (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Editor & Publisher ^ | August 18, 2006 | David D. Perlmutter

[50sDad]

This is tragic because the Lebanese people did suffer in the last war and many experienced genuine, non-doctored bereavement and destruction.

Often as the direct result of allowing the Hezzbullies to store and fire missiles as Isreal from their own homes, in the hopes that Isreal wouldn't fire back. Idiots.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for your reply and your excellent summary of the MSM Woes due to the internet.

"Enter the Internet, and the Old Ways have been blown to hell. In the truest expression of democracy, $25 for a site name buys you the biggest printingpress in the world (long as you pay the hosting fees.) And barring that, FR and other chat sites are potentially free (in the short run.) Like the Revolutionary era pamphleteers, we can once again stand in the village square and shout "That's not right!" The hallowed "fact-checking" function of the news reporter, long buryed under inches of bias-dust at the networks, has been taken over by the commoners.

"And boy, are the Gatekeepers p!$$ed. The "little people" out there in the flyover states have forgotten where they fit in the food chain, and are getting uppity. Don't they know that Hollywood and New York and all the flashy News-a-tainment people are supposed to tell them what to believe?"

"Every man a king. And it all came out of Arpnet, a system designed to let the military and higher education share data between nodes. You gotta laugh sometimes."

Before our revolution and during it, our ancestors gathered in the town squares, pubs, churches and meeting halls to discuss what the Revolutionary era pamphleteers had printed. Those printings, discussions and actions afterwards helped to make us a free country.

Now it is happening on the internet and Free Republic.

[Grampa Dave]

The days of MSM staging pr photos, combined with fauxtography for the MSM without questions re their validity are over.

[Carl LaFong]

Where's N.O. beer guy? ;<)

[winner3000]

This is absolutely hilarious!

[Sicon]

more aesthetic bias than political prejudice

B*llsh*t! If this were the case, the photo fakery would not have been so clearly biased AGAINST Israel. It is entirely political prejudice, whether on the part of the photographer or the editorial staff that frames/captions the photo and writes the story around it.

[Grampa Dave]

The MSM's hatred of Israel and love affair of Islamofascists like the Hezzies has enabled the Hezzies to become powerful and dangerous.

[Grampa Dave]

I will have to add NO beer guy to my highly accurate photos taken in Lebanon from my easy chair.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks.

The liars of the MSM make it so easy.

[WestTexasWend]

Great post! This headline would work, too:
"Photojournalism in Circus..."

[bmwcyle]

good work, pookie18 take note

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks to the creativity of Potlatch, this will be added to my accurate but fake photos of the war in Lebanon.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks.

The tough part is deciding what not to use. There is so much great stuff out there and here on Free Republic.

[kjo]

I haven't believed anything I have read or seen in the MSM since November 22, 1963. They have covered up the murder of JFK for going on forty years, nothing has changed.

[an amused spectator]

Media Schadenfreude PING.

A delicious Friday afternoon repast provided by E&P and Freeper abb.

Enjoy!

[weegee]

Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, for Maus about his parents' survival of the Holocaust, and former cartoon editor for the New Yorker) long ago (pre-2000) said that digital photography meant that photo journalism could no longer be trusted.

He was advocating the notion of the use of illustration/cartooning in some news reports (and had an interesting 2-page example, as well as a single page interview of Jerry Lewis conducted by Bill "Zippy the Pinhead" Griffith). They did a lot to make use of "cartooning" (which is not necessarily "funny") but did little to improve reporting. Just another way to convey information (although Will Eisner used the format to make military maintenance and saftey instruction not so drab and somewhat clearer).

Even before digital photography, there was nearly 100 years of photo manipulation going on. BUT it was harder to manipulate an image and still present an "original negative" that could easily be inspected by an editor.

I'd heard at one point in time that digital images were not admissible in court (but I doubt that is the case today).

[Alex1977]

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks.

The outing and fall from the famous of Blather by Buckhead et al and Free Republic was the beginning of the end for the lying MSM.

[VOA]

But the photojournalist standing on the crumbling ramparts of her
once proud citadel now sees the vandal army charging for the sack
led by “zombietime,” “The Jawa Report,” “Powerline,”
“Little Green Footballs,” “confederateyankee,” and many others.

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing,
contextual, fact-based (if occasionally speculative) media criticism
I have always asked of my students.

Poor guy still doesn't get it.
Thanks to the Internet (well, except for the part in Communist China),
the MSM workproduct is open for review by hundreds of retired spooks
who spent their careers making and spotting forgeries.

Thank you G-d that I've lived to see the MSM frauds exposed in
the light of day.

[TChris]

A very well-written article. I only hope we can see more journalists, especially photojournalists, with the kind of ethics the author describes. Of course, that won't solve the problem of political bias, but we'll sure take progress where we can get it.