Wednesday, August 23, 2006

THE MARKUP

E&P Editor to Bloggers: Who Are You to Question Brave Photographers? [Stephen Spruiell]

To Allah's takedown, I would only add the following. As one example of blogger overreaction during the fauxtography dust-up, Greg Mitchell cites the NYT's use of an incorrect caption that labeled a rescue worker who allegedly fell in some debris as the victim of an Israeli airstrike:

Here's just one typical example of blog hysteria in their attacks on what some of them call "fauxtography."

An image captured by one of The New York Times' most acclaimed photographers, Tyler Hicks, that appeared in the paper and in a gallery at its Web site, showed a young man being pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed building after the Israeli attack on Qana that killed at least 28, including 16 or more children. Eagled-eyed bloggers soon found, on other news sites, images of the same man darting about the same disaster scene, trying to rescue people.

So, in their usual manner, they put 1 and 1 together and got 2 much [Har!]: One blog after another charged that this man, after doing his rescue work, was planted on the pile, as a bomb victim, by Hezbollah, probably with the cooperation of Tyler Hicks, who then sent the manipulated photo around the world. The Times, as usual, was denounced by the rightwing bloggers for pro-terrorist and/or anti-American bias. [...]

Well, there was, indeed, something wrong with the Times presentation. On the Web, though not in print, it suggested that the man had been blasted in the Israeli attack. In fact, the Times quickly found out — and corrected its Web caption — that the man fell down and got hurt in his rescue efforts. This simple explanation for the chronology was too much for some of the bloggers who continued questioning the incident, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

First: All the major conservative bloggers updated their posts on this photo when the NYT offered its explanation for what happened, and several apologized to Hicks for overreacting.

Second: "... all the evidence to the contrary," in this case, is the word of the New York Times, which hasn't been worth so much lately. Left-wing bloggers especially have expressed anger at the NYT for lying about the length of time it held the NSA wiretapping story, and specifically accusing editor Bill Keller of holding the story to help Bush win the 2004 election.

So are conservative bloggers wrong to be skeptical when the NYT's word is all they have to go on? Especially when these same bloggers have uncovered a mountain of evidence that Hezbollah stages scenes for photographers?

Mitchell editorialized early and often against the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah. Is it a coincidence that now he is attacking the bloggers who exposed the staged and altered photographs that without exception served an anti-Israeli agenda?

UPDATE: All your fakes are belong to us.

08/23 05:11 PM Share