"The pictures are what will stop the war, and if we can get these pictures in front of a mass audience, and get these stories in front of a mass audience, maybe we'll have some effect.""It's all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it's not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment," he said.
"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to "edit" the material.
"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get sued," De Palma said.
"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real."
Shades of William Randolph Hearst:
"You provide the pictures and I'll provide the war."
Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features scandal-mongering, sensationalism, jingoism or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as "not quite libel".
Or to put it another way, Zogbyism, Enemedia At Work. Goebbels would be proud.
Meanwhile I'll point out that this is not the first time the media has tried this during this war:
Abuse photos 'were staged in UK'
The photographs appeared to show soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment urinating on a prisoner and striking him with a rifle.Except the soldier who posed for the photos was located and the equipment (including the truck) were not deployed.
MIRROR BOSS QUITS POST(Admits photos are fake - "victim of a calculated malicious hoax")
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.
Brig Geoff Sheldon said: "It's time that the ego of one editor is measured against the life of the soldier.
[snip]
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.
Soldier arrested over Mirror hoax photos
At least one soldier has been arrested over fake pictures showing alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British troops, the defence ministry says.The photos were published in the Daily Mirror just days after similar ones were published in the United States showing U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners, shocking the world and causing widespread anger in the Arab world.
Charge the fit-up fakers with treason (re: Daily Mirror's fake UK Iraqi POW photos)
So now we’re told that it doesn’t matter whether or not the Iraqi torture pictures are fakes.What’s important is that British soldiers are mistreating prisoners.
And if the phoney photos have drawn attention to this greater evil, then so well and good.
Yeah, right.
[snip]
We’re getting the steady drip, drip, drip of more photos, more allegations — even though the latest batch appear to feature the same dopey female soldier as the original bunch.
These images will be replayed time and time again. {We’re getting the steady drip, drip, drip of more photos, more allegations — even though the latest batch appear to feature the same dopey female soldier as the original bunch.
I also can’t help wondering if ever again it will be possible to win a war in an age of “human rights” and a hostile media.
Who needs al-Jazeera when you’ve got the Guardian and the BBC?
In the Second World War we were only up against Lord Haw Haw and the might of Nazi Germany.
Study: Hizbullah won propaganda war
LA Times Publishes Iran Propaganda Claim, Ignores Fauxtography (MSM busted AGAIN)
L.A. Times Photographer Fired Over Altered Image
Bogus GI rape photos used as Arab propaganda
Cuba publishes bogus GI rape photos
Porn site depicting 'GI rapes' shut down
Porn princess speaks out on 'rape' photo flap
Those fake rape photos: Boston Globe attempts cover-up of fake rape pix (Boston Globe ran the photos as FACT after they'd already been denounced by the State Dept. and revealed as a hoax around the world)
The first Photoshop war [doctored photos could be harbinger of crisis]
A photo will no longer be worth a thousand wordsWe're not only talking about a fundamental ethical problem that is only of interest to professionals. In the short run, the doctored photos may serve to dramatize Lebanese suffering and display the destruction sowed by Israel in Lebanon as greater in scope than it really is.
Yet over time, the weak party to the war will pay the price for the forgery, after human sensitivity to its pain will be dulled. This is tragic because the Lebanese people did suffer in the last war and many experienced genuine, non-doctored bereavement and destruction.
In the future, even when genuine photos from wars will be distributed, it's likely that the other side will plant changes in them and redistribute them in order to undermine their credibility and make audiences doubt them, as part of a propaganda war.
Once those insights are internalized, and the general public knows that it can no longer believe what it sees, a photo will no longer be worth a thousand words – it won't even be worth one word.
The missing pictures from the Arab world
Torture Existed Before Abu Gharib, But Why No Coverage?[snip]
But there are other people in the region who see the crisis through a different lens. In Beirut, amazement was mostly about George W. Bush addressing Arab TV. Lebanese were certainly disgusted by the aired images but they were stunned by the fact that a U.S. President was "talking" to Arab citizens. The region is infested with worse ugliness than the prison scandal, yet no one can remember any Arab leader addressing his people about abuse.
"Our dictators never showed up on any media, at anytime, for any picture" said many Syrians, "despite 28 years of horrors in their detention centers." Thousands of citizens were tortured in al Mazza, the Syrian equivalent of Abu Ghraib, yet no one lifted a finger. Many in the region have their own horror pictures, but who will publish them as long as no Americans were involved?
From Iraq, other voices blasted the media: "What was happening in the same cells of Abu Ghraib under the Baath defies human logic. The awful photos of today would be only appetizers," said Saddam's survivors. "We have pictures, we have documents, but that won't please your elites."
The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]
CNN covered up news of torture and abuse under Saddam so that they could maintain their Baghdad Bureau. Human rights mean nothing to them. It is all about power and access.
I spit in the eye of the treasonous media and how dare this useful idiot claim that the media is somehow "supressing" bad news? The only 'bad news' is that the media's propaganda is being exposed on the internet as a bunch of damned lies designed to provide aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.
Screw you, De Palma.
Weegee, great post—although I might have to send my blood pressure meds bill to you as a result. ;)
Seriously, this is just infuriating.