Posted on 08/28/2006 10:57:00 AM PDT by John Jorsett
Does the mainstream press ever wonder why conservatives distrust them so much?
If so, they need look no further than the “fauxtography” scandals of the last couple of weeks. Conservative bloggers have been hard at work sniffing out suspected fakery and staging in the photos sent back on the newswires from the Israel/Hezbollah conflict, and the investigation got pretty smelly.
First, there was Reutersgate, in which the international news organization had to pull a photo and fire a freelance photographer because he clumsily Photoshopped thicker smoke into the skyline of Beirut.
This incident got bloggers wondering what other photographic evidence of Israeli aggression had been Photoshopped or staged into existence, and just how complicit the news media was in the fakery. They came up with a photo by the same Reuters photographer, in which he had added flares to a photograph of an Israeli plane, and called them missiles.
But that was just the beginning. There was Green Helmet Guy, who seemed to be ever-present at the sites of Israeli “atrocities,” always making the most of the evidence of civilian casualties. He even played director to international news crews and photographers, showing them how to get the best shots of Lebanese casualties.
Then there was the “Passion of the Toys,” in which brand-new toys—poignant symbols of childhood innocence—seemed to keep popping up, perfectly framed by the destruction of war, yet strangely unscathed by it.
Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Later came the “unluckiest multiple home owner in Lebanon,” photographed on several occasions, weeping in front of her several homes, bombed by several Israeli airstrikes. Then, we have the New York Times’ pieta, in which a rescue worker was carelessly identified as a victim of an airstrike when, in fact, he had been injured while working in the area. And, the flaming tire atrocity. And, the time Hezbollah bombed an Israeli ship in Australia.
Finally, this week, there was the ambulance attack that maybe wasn’t. There’s strong evidence to suggest that the two ambulances allegedly hit by Israeli airstrikes on July 23 were not exactly pulverized by missiles, as we were led to believe.
Reuters fired its fake photographer, which was the correct response to such deception. But, beyond that, there has not been much comeuppance for photographers and reporters involved in airbrushed, faked, and staged news.
The mainstream media’s response to the allegations from blogs has been more along the lines of Greg Mitchell’s, editor of Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine whose mission it is to cover “all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.”
Mitchell’s response to accusations from bloggers—instead of answering the charges and refuting evidence—was to get very defensive, claim that “rightwing bloggers” were only attempting to smear photojournalists as a group, and then proceed to smear rightwing bloggers as a group for daring to point out the dishonesty of some photojournalists, and raise questions about how business is conducted in the Middle East.
You can see Mitchell’s response to the accusations, here and here. You can see the deconstruction thereof, here and here. All are worth a read to really understand how the mainstream media deals with accusations of fraud, and how cavalierly it tosses aside some of its most avid consumers’ concerns. Here’s a typical paragraph from one of Mitchell’s pieces:
Time does not permit a point by point documentation of the dozens of ludicrous, or at least completely unproven, examples of doctored or staged or otherwise manipulated photos on the Web. Have no fear, I will soon return to this subject, but in the meantime, feel free to plunge into the blogosphere. If you go deeply enough, you may feel you are back on the Grassy Knoll. One of the most-linked sites in this controversy, EU Referendum, goes so far as to suggest that a kind of Hollywood "film-set" was improvised at the site of the Qana killings "for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media."
I would highly recommend you go through the links I’ve listed above and decide for yourself whether the accusations are “ludicrous,” particularly the video of a Hollywood film-set improvised at the site of the Qana killing, “for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media.”
Instead of addressing concerns and refuting evidence, Mitchell calls bloggers a bunch of Grassy Knoll-ers intent on discrediting “the media as a whole.” This is not the way to win trust with your audience.
Mitchell then went on to discredit himself within the space of just a couple hours.
On Friday, the Confederate Yankee blog brought attention to a column Mitchell had written in 2003, in which he confessed to making up news as a young reporter. He had been sent out to do a story on Niagara Falls, and found himself unable to talk to tourists to get quotes. So, he sat on a bench and made the quotes up. He confessed his journalistic sin in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
Many other blogs picked up on the 2003 column, suggesting that Mitchell might be sympathetic to faked news because he himself had been a faker.
Several hours after Confederate Yankee’s post went up, that blogger noticed the text of the 2003 article had been changed. The lede had gone from this:
Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?
To this (additions in bold):
Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?
The column had been edited, without notation, within a couple of hours of bloggers calling attention to it, to emphasize Mitchell’s youth and inexperience at the time of his ethical faux pas. Luckily, several bloggers and the Internet preserved the original piece.
So, it seems someone went back and altered a three-year-old column to reflect more positively on Mitchell, once it got a bit of attention from the “Grassy Knoll,” “rightwing bloggers.” Makes all those “ludicrous” accusations of dishonesty of the mainstream press seem not so ludicrous, doesn’t it?
Mitchell now has not just his industry’s malfeasance to answer for, but his own malfeasance, which he admitted to in a 2003 column, and which was then compounded when someone altered his three-year-old copy to protect him.
Changing copy three years after it has been published, without providing a “correction” or “clarification” note, is entirely unethical by the very standards of the newspaper industry Mitchell is charged with covering. Dan Riehl, another blogger, has evidence that Mitchell may have been altering copy in his latest E&P column, as well.
Rightwing bloggers are predisposed to distrust the media, as are most conservatives. The fauxtographers and defenders like Mitchell are giving us no reason to be encouraged. The mainstream press’ stock is in credibility. The right course is to answer, quickly and thoroughly, any credible charges against them, so as to preserve that stock.
Instead, with the notable exceptions of David Perlmutter and Jim Pinkerton, the mainstream media seems content to blame it all on the Grassy Knoll while half of its readers find news coverage is greener on the other side.
This is why we don’t believe you.
BTTT
This lady ties a lot of the latest shenanigans together in a neat emailable and linkable package. For spreading the word of course ;^)
Honestly, now, who did that superb work?
You hit the nail right on the head regarding their double standard.
Could you possibly date and enlarge the ten(!) HRC covers so that we can get a chance to see some faux age "regression" with time?
Not only the cover shots are Photoshopped, but some inside pics as well, both in the current issue and previous ones. A good example is the closeup of her in this year's "100 Most Influential" issue (May 8). I'm almost certain that none of the other 99 received the same treatment from their photographers.
Not only are the "people they hate" not touched up to look better as HRC is, but their photos are doctored to make them look worse - the Ann Coulter cover shot is a good example.
As I said, it may be funny to some people but it nonetheless is another MSM scandal in and of itself.
Just two things:
Does the mainstream press ever wonder why conservatives distrust them so much?
1. The dying socialist "mainstream" newsrooms do not care what conservatives think - - conservatives are not part of their target audience. Naturally, therefore, they do not care if conservatives distrust them.
2. I would argue that conservatives have travelled beyond "trusting" or "distrusting" the dying socialist "mainstream" newsrooms anyway. These days it is simply taken for granted that these newsrooms cannot be trusted. (Um - - this is a large part of why they are dying....? Doh!)
Personally, I only check in with the dying socialist "mainstream" newsrooms out of idle curiosity, though less and less often as my disgust at their increasingly shrill collective death kick grows. (Read any NY Times editorials lately? They come off as if they were written by radical lefty, Daily Collegian crybabies. Absolutely pathetic. My, how the mighty have fallen!)
Thanks for the ping, FGS. Great piece!
What a great job nailing the media. Love it!
Actually, while the majority of big papers transitioned to "objective" journalism after the Civil War, a large number of "pennies" and other papers, well before the "Yellow Journalists," maintained a steady dose of sensationalism and crime.
The peoples cube
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/NYT_Warsaw_uprising_editors.gif
Of course you're right about that; memory fails me from time to time. Just out of curiousity, would you say the print war between Pulitzer and Hearst broke the objectivity "agreement" amongst the major players; maybe breaking the dam? Possibly laying the groundwork for our current crop of propagandists?
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bttt
Notice that, with the exception of the 2003 photo, she seems to have gotten younger looking with the passage of time (no pun intended).
She looks like she's got pretty severe wrinkling for her age in the earliest shot. I'd bet that the Photoshop software was not yet available in '92. That would explain it.
No, that's too simplistic. There were hundreds of "sensationalist" papers out there, the largest prior to Hearst or Pulizer being a NY paper started in the 1830s called the Sun, followed by Bennett's "Herald," which was the biggest-selling paper of its day. The "objective" papers certainly dominated in sheer subscriptions, but the sensationalist papers never went away.
In fact, that's pretty much what we're left with today isn't it; particularly "broadcast" journalism. Can you tie that in with the leftist agenda somehow? Or are they unrelated?
The partisan press took a vacation from 1865 to about 1960---but that's not to be confused with the "sensationalist" press, which never left. Now, PART of leftism is reporting the bad, namely the "progressive" notion that since the world isn't perfect, the status quo is always the enemy, so you must always report negative stuff. To from that perspective, sensationalism has always been leftist. I think the tendency toward "bad news" is progressive in nature; but when the bad news is accelerated and enhanced by partisan reporting, then it becomes the drive-by media.
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