Drinking from Home posts two Reuters pictures (CORRECTION: one Reuters picture and one AP) of a woman lamenting the destruction of her home by the Israelis. Different dates, different homes, same woman.
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12 comments to More Reuters picture oddities |
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Time to sell those Reuters shares, I guess.
Counterterrorism blog has an important post on Reuters relationship with Hizballah and its allies.
[W]hen you read the release you realize that the “representative” of all of Lebanon in the eyes of the Reuters reporter is no one other than pro-Syrian, Hezbollah ally, Nabih Berri, the leader of Shiite Movement Amal.
I remember having last week a spirited discussion on these very pages with someone who claimed that he “trusted” Reuters.
As my Jewish friends say: Oy.
Well, how do we know she didn’t own two houses, which both got bombed because she rented them out to Hezbollah? 😉
I’m just being facetious.
One excuse we likely won’t see in public from Reuters: “Those arabs, they all look alike.”
It’s been a week since I sent an LTE to my local paper, asking why they aren’t reporting on the Palliwood scandal, the Israeli footage of missiles firing from Qana, and all the fake ‘casualties’. No response, no phone calls…. They have a habit of waiting weeks until the story is no longer news, then calling to ask if I still want the letter printed.
I just filed an official complaint with the Beeb. I’d suggest folks do the same. Lessee if they respond…
I have been thinking about this, and conclude all these blogospheric vapourings about news pictures actually constitute a category error.
News media are frequently biased, to be sure. And this goes for Fox and blogs as much, often more, than it goes for what are seen as the liberal media. The frenzy of blog attacks on media coverage of certain topics is itself a sort of meta-bias. I doubt the biases of the BBC are any greater in the coverage of the Middle-East than other topics, but they arouse disproportionate rage and “fact checking” because blogs are hung up on Middle Eastern affairs, are predominantly hawkish on the Israeli/US side, and feed on each other to a much greater extent than commercial media.
The reason I put “fact checking” in inverted commas is that frequently it isn’t. Media bias shows up in editorialising mainly: in selection of the facts that the journalist deems relevant, or in the language used to present them. Lies – things purporting to be facts that are untrue and known by the news organisation to be untrue – are vanishingly rare. Self-confirming mistakes – where the reporter is told something that he assumes is true because it fits with his theory of affairs and he has no countervailing knowledge – are much more common, and frequently exploited by disinformation experts – witness the various impossible ‘terrorist plots’ credulously reported in the last few years.
But most common of all is use of language. You can’t fact-check that. To the extent that it expresses an opinion without making that explicit (and writing without implicit opinion at all is very hard), then there will be bias. What gets some blogs so riled is that they take their own opinions for fact and therefore differing journalistic opinions as a lying plot.
Which brings us to pictures. The big category mistake is that many people take news pictures as statements of fact in themselves and forget that editing selection and polishing apply to them, just as they apply also to the words of the story. For news pictures are, just like the words that accompany them, merely the means of telling the story.
In the instant case, if Palestinian houses are destroyed and you need to show something to illustrate some people made homeless (news requirements being more and more visual, as the market demands), then you take a stock shot of some people made homeless in such circumstances. This arouses the ire of some friends of Israel, not because it isn’t true that some people have been made homeless as part of a collective punishment policy, and not because the stock shot isn’t a representation of that process – but because it is.
If you want to support a controversial policy (despite even your own doubts, perhaps), the less it is reported and discussed the better, and vivid reports are unwelcome. The opinion that the Israeli policy is right and proper, is undermined by an emotive representation facts of the policy in action, which hints at an opposite opinion. It is easier to deconstruct the representation than admit that opposite opinion might have any ground at all. And that’s what is at the bottom of most accusations of bias (from wherever they emerge): by showing up the rhetorical tricks of the opponent, one comfortingly misdirects oneself that the opposing position is only a rhetorical trick, motivated by some innate evil.
I have no doubt that when the news does turkey stories at Christmas or Thanksgiving, significantly fewer film crews are despatched to farms than stock-shots used. Are there complaints that these stories aren’t true because the particular turkeys shown have been dead for years?
Guy posts above, interestingly and usefully reminding us that we all come to news reporting with our own prejudices.
This is doubtless true. Though also some people have more prejudices to bring than others.
Guy then uses the term “category error”.
Now, I might be being unkind to Guy (in seeing a theme in his comment that does not exist, except in my prejudiced mind), however here goes.
I see he is making an error more fundemental than that of any category. It is that truth is not one of the primary aspects of news reporting.
It’s also worth remembering that “prejudice” is, amongst other things: “an opinion formed without sufficient knowledge”.
Now, if perversion of evidence (ie knowledge of what happened) is legitimate and widespread, how can even a saint form an opinion that is unprejudiced?
Best regards
Kim – I still do trust Reutes more than most other providers and certainly the CNNs of this world. At least there is a kill on the picture now. Your slant was that Reuters had an agenda and/or was intentionally misrepresenting the situation, which I think is unfounded. In fact it is shooting one of the more reliable messengers you have.
Note that people like CNN and CBS pay BIG BUCKS to de-brand Reuters material to give the folks back home the impression that they are some kind of world news network (which they are not).
Guy,
Partly quite right and partly quite wrong. It is a simple truism that both individuals and organisations which comment on or analyse curent affairs can and do have their biases. Furthermore, they are perfectly entitled to them. Samizdata has a bias, as does the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mail etc etc. To my knowledge, nobody demands neutrality.
The difference with the BBC is partly due to the ‘unique way it is funded’ (extortion) and also partly due to the fact that it is held out as and trades on a reputation of being above and beyond any crass biases or partisanship. Hence, its global reputation of being an unimpeachable and trustworthy organ of record.
This is why it is attacked by many bloggers in a way that, say, the Guardian is not. It is central to the whole phenomenon of blogging that it seeks to challenge the settled assumption that only organisations such as the BBC can trusted to act as information gatekeepers. The only way to do this is to consistently expose the various tricks and ruses by which the BBC seeks to camouflage the many axes it is actually grinding and then hold them up for ridicule and contempt.
Which is why when CNN, CBS, FOX and their ilk try to come up with something on their own this is the result.
I also emailed the BBC and they have now changed the image (almost a pity – it’s not like they will acknowledge their error). The editor’s blog is running a piece on media bias and indirectly mention the photo issues. Worth people contributing if they can.
In relation to this I will now say that Reutes stringer images are now ‘media non grata’ until something serious is done about it.
However, this does not mean that the “al-Reuters” redneck “not from my farm” newshaters are vindicated.