The art of deception: Pictures can lie, but people lie a lot more
Photo Credits: (missiles) Sepah News photo via Agence France-Presse/NY Times, (Powell) The Associated Press
Lying is a moral choice people make. Individuals lie. Governments lie -- some lie more than others. The truth is, lying is a fact of life.
Ethicist Sissela Bok puts it this way, "Deception and violence -- these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings" (Lying: Moral choice in public and private life, 1978, New York: Vintage, p. 19).
In this age of photo ops and digital photographic manipulation, the "deliberate assault" on human beings appears unremitting. Deception leads to violence against humanity. In fact, when was the last time a lie got us out of a war? This article compares two forms of deception used by individuals and government to shape public opinion – the digitally altered image and the photo op.
Who can forget one of the first major digital deceptions -- the 1992 OJ Simpson mug shot on the cover of Time magazine?
Despite the uproar caused by the darkening of Simpson's skin, the manipulation appeared an anomaly -- a fluke produced by an artist who decided to take creative license with a mug shot.
In a 2006 survey I conducted to help clarify what professionals consider to photo manipulation, I used three different definitions and asked respondents to agree or disagree.
When questioned, "I define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of a picture after it is made through electronic means," nearly 90 percent of respondents agree with the statement.
In a similar way, when asked, "I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original," again, the majority agrees with the definition.
However when asked, "I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the picture better aesthetically," responses greatly varied.
In this case, 10 percent strongly agree, while 27 percent agree. The remaining 62 percent remain either neutral on the definition or disagree with the statement. As one respondent suggests, "This is a small part of photo digital manipulation, not necessarily THE definition. I would guess this is where the amateur checks in--cleaning up redeye or other little messy details that are easily fixed in this digital world."
At the same time, when presented the definition, "I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting," a majority affirmed the statement.
This raises an issue of semantics, since making "the picture better aesthetically" and making "the picture more visually interesting" seem, at least to me, fairly closely related. In fact, one participant asks, "Can we define the difference 'manipulation' vs. 'image enhancement/post-processing' (tone, color, contrast, brightness, etc.).
Perhaps this is where the line begins to be drawn for many people. For decades, post-production processes have accepted the enhancement through dodging and burning, yet today event long-standing antecedent practices appear to be under the magnifying glass.
Recently, major news outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Los Angles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, used a photograph of an Iranian missile launch. The photograph turned out to be digitally altered. Headlines accompanying the picture showing four long-range missiles coming off pads were written, true to form, to both seduce as well as edify readers.
The logic here is that if big media buys into a lie, then the public will follow. Not so, thanks to an intrepid army of bombastic bloggers ready to pounce on the slightest journalistic misstep, the truth was revealed. The Iranian government's official news agency manipulated the image. Stop the presses. Why should surprise anyone that Iran would use deception in its current high stakes game of threats against the West?
Pictures, after all, have been used to provoke conflicts for a very long time. In 1897, media baron William Randolph Hearst allegedly told his artist in Cuba, Frederick Remington, who was apparently bored with his assignment for lack of action, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Even though Hearst disputed the quote, there is something prescient in the statement. History tells us that Hearst made a moral choice to provoke a conflict with Spain. After the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, Hearst's newspaper and others fabricated stories about Spanish atrocities against civilians in Cuba and Puerto to force intervention. Hearst's moral choice to lie was motivated mostly by blind ambition. Hearst needed to build up his media empire. What better way to build a news business than by inventing a war? However, Iran's motivation to manipulate images of its defense system is purely rhetorical -- a way of flipping off the United States after all the chest thumping it has been getting from the White House. The picture is a rhetorical act because it traffics in persuasion and ideology. Lying is a mind game. In game theory, credibility and veracity are cornerstones of influencing an opponent's choices. Bloggers, anxious to make a little news of their own, called Iran's digital bluff, but the game is far from over. In fronting Iran's play, bloggers may have actually escalated tensions between the countries and forced us closer to war.
Different kinds of Deception
While digital photo manipulation is an explicit lie, there are other forms of deception that are far more insidious.
These lies, as illustrated in the photo op pictured above, are more ambiguous and at times even more deceitful. When former Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a vial containing a model of anthrax during it was to convince the world that Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction presented a clear and present danger. The vial was a prop used to signify peril and that if the U.S. failed to rid the world of Hussein we could only imagine the worse possible scenario. Powell's visual cues were supported by statements such as "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" and "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Although the U.N. Security Council didn't buy Powell's rhetoric, the U.S. press did. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan notes the White House press corps were "complicit enablers" in the buildup to the war in Iraq. Much of the media at the time were eager to have "good" visuals to accompany White House rhetoric and Powell's waving of the pseudo biological weapon worked like a charm. The picture appeared on the pages of most U.S. newspapers and magazines and helped to sell the war to the American public.
While Iran's digital altered missile image was an explicit lie, Powell's pretentious viral rattling theatrics, however, was a more insidious form of deception. The moral choices made at this level are more ambiguous and implicit. Moreover, it is harder to detect the lies when they are presented as "official" news. When political strategists try to spin messages they rely heavily on educated guesses about what they can get away with selling to the American public.
The press often appear to unabashedly play by the rules of the game, and the political image-makers own the rule book. Therefore, much of what we see has been managed to provide predictable responses. Powell's visit to the U.N. was a pseudo-event far more interested in winning hearts and minds than it was about telling the truth.
Staged pseudo-events are part of our political culture and rarely called into question by the public. But there also appears to be greater tolerance for verbal shock and awe over pseudo-events that use physically altered images. Robert Warren explains Daniel Boorstin's theory of the pseudo-event as "a manufactured happening that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy through media exposure."
Stirring up public fear through the influence of government propaganda as played out in the press, be it by Iran or the U.S., continues to deliberately assault human beings around the world through deceit and violence.
Despite overly self-absorbed and obsessed with smoking guns theory bloggers are acting as change agents in this country. Bloggers challenge journalists to live up their implicit promise to "afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted." Moreover, bloggers are setting the tone for more engaged and visually sophisticated audiences. Bloggers are now beginning to speak truth to power by calling into question the deceptive practices committed by institutions of authority in this country.
July 12, 2008 in altered images, digital literacy, digital media and teaching, digitally altered pictures, Internet Learning, iran , Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, media accountability, Media Bias, media consolidation, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photo digital manipulation, photo fakery, photo portfolios, Photo-ops, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photographic ritual, Photographs and Politics, photography, photography and history, Photography and society, Photojournalism, propaganda, public journalism, teaching, visual culture citicism, visual journalism education, visual perception, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, ways of seeing, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: AFP, bloggers, colin powell , current affairs, deceit, deception, deception, digital manipulation, Iran, iran missiles, lies, lying, media criticism, missiles, photo manipulation, Photo Ops, politics, Propganda, public opinion, public trust, Sepah, The New York Times, war, war, Weapons of Mass Destruction
Handshakes, hugs and hoopla -- What pictures don't tell us
Photo Credit: Jim Young/Reuters
In a political cycle of relentless photo-ops, countless handshakes, hugs and flag-waving hoopla, it is refreshing to see beyond the candidates to the more human side of life. Young's picture, showing two tired children holding campaign signs in Winterset, Iowa on December 22, offers some comic relief at a time when everything we see and hear out of Iowa or New Hampshire these days seems to little more than create more apathy toward the political process. Thousands of images are transmitted to news organizations each day, but what do they really say about a candidate?
One assumption is that the pictures say very little about the candidate's ability to lead a nation. Instead, what most of the images represent are more about the what the campaigns and media thinks the audience wants to see. At times, there is a glimpse of a human side of a candidate, but for the overwhelming majority of pictures just tastes like a spoonful of cold canned peas. The candidates attempt to project and protect his or her political image, something often proscribed by media handlers. The media, for their part, dutifully carry the message and image, out in the public domain. But increasingly, the message lands flat or is met with incredulity and suspicion.
Pictures frame, freeze and fix a moment in time -- a moment, which has traditionally been grated a lot of credit as a faithful representation of reality and truth. In a political climate where there seems to be more similarities than differences between those seeking power in this country, pictures become a form of mind-numbing anesthesia.
The same thing could be said for other events. How many images have we seen now of President Bush visiting the hospital beds of soldiers injured in Iraq. Is there anything significant in Bush's patting the head of a bed-ridden Army Sgt. John Wayne Cornell of Lansing, Mich., and posing for a photo-op?
Photo Credit: White House
One way of looking at the image is that president would like us to see how much he really cares about the soldiers fighting in the Middle East. Another way of looking at the picture is as propaganda: Go to Iraq, get hurt, get a pat on the head from the Commander-In-Chief.
It's hard not to be a little disrespectful or cynical at times when photo-ops masquerade as reality. In fact, this critique should not be viewed as another Bush-bashing ploy. It doesn't matter who's in office -- the response, and the pictures that represent the response, are almost always predictable.
December 26, 2007 in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, digital literacy, George W. Bush, humor, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, media accountability, Media Bias, media consolidation, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photographic ritual, Photographs and Politics, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Political pictures, politics, Politics and Photography, President Bush, presidential campaign, propaganda, Reuters, visual culture citicism, visual journalism education, visual perception, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, ways of seeing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
"The dangers can't be overstated": Journalists in the cross-hairs
A recent survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism highlights the challenges of covering the war in Iraq. In the study, reporters concluded that "even the basics of getting the story are remarkably difficult."
Over the past four years, journalists have been increasingly forced into perilous situations. Nearly 57 percent of respondents in the survey report that Iraqi staff members working for them have either been killed or kidnapped in the past year. Many more Iraqi staff continue to be threatened. Even carrying a notebook in Iraq today can be a death sentence for Iraqis working for Western news operations. The survey shows that 87 percent of staff cannot identify themselves as working for news organizations.
Overall, journalists, according to the report, have a positive assessment of their coverage, but admit that they come up short when reporting on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
What can Americans expect from news coverage of Iraq in such a climate of fear and violence? Our perspective and perception of events in Iraq continues to be hindered by an increasing lack of access to information. At best, news organizations continue to rely upon journalists embedded with U.S. and coalition forces for information -- not exactly the best environment for reporting.
November 28, 2007 in Current Affairs, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Picturing the human costs of war
Source: AFP/Jim Watson
Since 2003, the War of Terror in Iraq has injured more than 16,500 U.S. soldiers, yet, until recently, little attention has been given to the issue.
How could such an important story get so buried by the mainstream media? Why does it take a scandal, such as the one the Washington Post reported on recently about conditions Walter Reed Army Medical Center to break through to the public?
Let's face it, pictures of a soldier having a leg amputated aren't as interesting as those showing the car bomb du jour in Baghdad. Pictures of a Marine learning how to walk again cannot compete with the seemingly endless stream of press conferences announcing the latest strategy for winning the war in Iraq. More than anything else, however, is the fact that pictures showing the consequences of the conflict gets personal. Every soldier has a story to tell that is unique and very personal. Ultimately, the stories soldiers have to tell reveal the disturbing and honest reality about the conflicts we find ourselves engaged in overseas.
To tell these stories accurately and honestly news organizations would have had to commit more resources than they normally would on what is typically considered human interest. However, there are exceptions such as Todd Heisler's Pulitzer Prize winning photo essay on a family's struggle to cope with the death of 2nd Lt. James Cathey or the essay by James Natchwey on soldiers recovering from injuries featured in Time magazine.
Part of the problem may be how news is categorized by news organization into what is perceived as either "hard" or "soft." The dichotomy between classifying news as more salient or relevant in terms of content becomes especially problematic in the case of the injured soldiers story.
Showing how the lives of thousands of injured Americans are dramatically changed by war challenges our preconceptions of what news is.
In other words, it appears that the mainstream media doesn't get behind a story like this one until there is critical mass. This gets back to the criticism that the media may not tell us what to think, but they do tell us what to think about.
How the injured soldiers story has been typically framed for us as a human interest story rather than as a "hard" news issue, until now, suggests a form of agenda setting. For example, look how long it took for Americans to see images of the flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. Clearly, there is are ideological interests involved in keeping Americans in denial about the very real costs of war. Pictures of injured soldiers does little to promote a war-time mentality, because they speak truth to power as well as challenge the logic and intelligence of our foreign policy makers.
There is a dramatic difference between what is perceived as "front" and "back" stage news stories. In society today, it is easy to miss all of the backstage stories associated with the conflict in Iraq since so much press attention seems to focus how a political administration reacts to specific developments and events from day to day. In many ways, evaluating how the media uses images from Iraq is like watching a football game on television.
In summary, what we too often see in visual reportage today is the "effect" without understanding the "cause."
February 23, 2007 in Agenda Setting, Battle-Hardened Troops, Current Affairs, Education, images of violence, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photographic ritual, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, propaganda, ritual, Southern Oregon University, visual culture citicism, visual journalism education, visual perception, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Washington Post, ways of seeing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tortured realities: The camera phone comes of age
The potential of the camera phone image to speak truth to power cannot be underestimated. As James Fallows observes, "History is driven by ideas and passions, and by unforeseeable events....History is also driven by science and technology."
When technology slams headlong into inhumane and unjustice acts, people begin to take notice. Today, we are on the verge of a digital revolution with the emergence of cell phone technologies -- one that can be seen as a positive force used to promote democracy or one that may eventually be used to destroy it.
Pictures from Abu Ghraib of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners,the tsunami disaster, the subway bombings in London, the execution of Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, and more recently the photographs of Egyptian police torturing suspects suggests the emergence of a hyper-mediated surveillance society.
The motivation to photograph atrocities by the perpetrators, such as in Abu Ghraib prison, Haditha, and in Egypt indicates how people in positions of power and control blindly operate by a code of conduct that is beyond any law -- human or devine. The soldiers and police making these images possess a sense superiority and impunity toward those they deem to be the enemy. The pictures they make may be made as evidence, entertain, or propaganda.
When 21-year-old Egytian minibus driver Imad Kabir was hung upside down and sodomized, his torturers recorded the proceedings with a camera phone and then transmitted the video to the Kabir's co- workers as a warning. The pictures eventually made their way onto the Internet and two police offers were jailed in the incident.
Originally conceived as an act of oppression against those opposing the government's authority, the Egyptian camera phone images reveal the often rumored and insidious truth about the mistreatment of prisoners. It is extremely difficult for any government to deny such cases of abuse when the evidence appears so indisputable.
The camera phone images we have seen in recent years are glimpses of a world we have heard about but have seldom seen. Images of atrocity and abuse, revealing the darkest side of humanity, speak truth to power as history unfolds before our eyes.
January 19, 2007 in Canon EOS Digital Cameras, censorship, Citizen journalism, Civil Rights, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, diffusion of innovation, digital cameras, Education, Family Values, First Amendment, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Mobile Journalists, moblogging, Moral complexity, new technologies, photo digital manipulation, photoblogs, photographic ritual, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, pictures of the year, point and shoot cameras, prisoner abuse, propaganda, public domain, public journalism, Saddam Hussein exectuion , signification, Southern Oregon University, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Agenda setting pictures
Photo Credit: AFP/Mandel Ngan
A recent file photo of President Bush and Vice President Cheney released by AFP shows how picture selection may contribute to how media agendas influence public policy and perception. The caption for the picture indicates nearly no relationship to the actual story.
The caption reads:
File picture of Vice President Dick Cheney (R) and US President George W. Bush at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Bush and Cheney issued new warnings to Iran, saying it must keep out of Iraq, but Iraq's foreign minister instead called for the release of five Iranians in US custody in his country.
Perhaps in better times, when the president's popularity was a little stronger than it is today, the picture choice may have been difference. However, with the president in the hot seat over his policy in Iraq, there appears little motivation on the part of the media to make him look good. Instead, what we will most likely see from here on in are pictures that show the president in comprising situations -- pictures of disfavor.
This brings us to the idea of agenda setting pictures, referring to the McCombs and Shaw theory that mass media may not tell us what to think, but it is pretty good at telling us what to think about.
Photo Credit: AFP/Tim Sloan
Here's another photo that suggests the picture editing mood swing that is happening these days in terms of the president's popularity or lack thereof. In this image, shortly after the Democrats cleaned house in the mid-term elections, the president and vice president are seen in retreat at the White House.
Photo Credit: APTV via AP
Finally, this video frame grab shows a somewhat less than defiant President Bush as he addresses the country about his strategy on Iraq last week.
If you are looking for a more decisively political take on this type of topic check out BagNewsNotes.
At the same time, this lay analysis may be nothing short of hooey. In the big picture of things, thousands of images of the president move across the wire weekly, and it would be silly to think that there is some sort of grand conspiracy to take visual cheap shots at the man.
What is most noticeable, however, is the apparent increase in less than flattering images of the president in recent weeks, especially since his troop surge plan has been met with distain in congress and elsewhere.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
January 15, 2007 in Agenda Setting, Bush, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, George W. Bush, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Photo-ops, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Political pictures, President Bush, propaganda, Southern Oregon University, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A sign for the times
Photo Credit: AP/WTMJ-AM
It shouldn't come as a great surprise that the upcoming midterm election is generating some interesting responses from critics on all sides of the political spectrum. Some U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq entered the limelight today as they took a swipe at John Kerry's recent criticism of the Bush Administration's policy on the war.
From one perspective, this banner not only represents a form of free expression it is also a political attack advertisement that is sure to be picked up by Republicans as they seek to find further means to discredit Democrats.
It's curious that both military commanders and the media view the soldiers' message as more humor and less about politics. However, if people read behind the joke, the implications are far more serious.
It would be interesting to see how military command as well as the media would react if the soldiers were criticizing George Bush in this way instead of John Kerry. No joke.
November 03, 2006 in First Amendment, Internet humor, Iraq, Iraq War, propaganda, signification, teaching, visual journalism education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
October 01, 2006 in Dennis Dunleavy, Family Values, George W. Bush, humor, illustration, Internet humor, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Media Manipulation, Political Cartoons, prisoner abuse, propaganda, teaching, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
When Iconic Images Become Meaningless
I read a provocative article this morning from Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick concerning the Abu Ghraib prison images -- pictures that once stung the conscience of this nation, and that now have lost their sting.
Lithwick writes with remarkable clarity when she argues that "Yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years."
In fact, the passage of the president's detainee bill in the Senate will put into law, and make legal, what horrfied so many in the pictures only three years ago.
Remember those incredibly real pictures of naked and humiliated prisoners being the subject of torture? Remember the dog attacking a terrified Iraqi or the guard pulling a prisoner along with a leash around his neck?
What has happened to the power of an image as its becomes stuffed into the recesses of memory? Why do these pictures no longer make us cry or scream with outrage?
With time pictures -- especially iconic images -- come to mean different things for different people. Take the Abu Ghraib prison pictures for example. What these images may mean to many Americans three years later is quite different than what they mean to al Queda operatives seeking new recruits in Iraq.
Terror has a funny way of creeping into popular culture -- just ask Jack Bauer, a.k.a Mr. Torture, of the hit television series "24". Americans have an freakish fascination with pain and humiliation, especially when it enters the fertile imagination through film, television, and video games.
September 29, 2006 in Civil Rights, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photographic ritual, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, prisoner abuse, propaganda, ritual, signification, Southern Oregon University, teaching, technology, video games, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The last few weeks have proved to be quite troubling for many observers of the media, especially the field of photojournalism.
The level of public scrutiny now given to images by the general public, especially on the Internet, is unprecedented. Political interests on all sides of the Middle East conflict are holding the social conscious of this nation hostage. Increasingly, audiences are called upon to become more visually literate when interpreting news images. News photography, which at one time maintained at least the perception of validity and truthfulness, is being undermined by a growing throng of disbelievers.
During the first two weeks of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, media coverage has become suspect as cases of photo-digital manipulation, events staged for the camera, and captioning errors come more fully to light. One blog, Zombietime, encourages readers to consider the importance of understand how images can be manipulated. The site offers tips on identifying four kinds of photographic fraud and lists the Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times as perpetrators.
Zombietime's analysis of news photography concludes four types of common manipulations:
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
The speed and immediacy of the Internet enables critics, on the left and the right of center, to identity, denounce, and defend news imagery that would otherwise go unnoticed by the masses. News organizations are responding to catch and punish any transgressors that undermine the integrity of the Fourth Estate, but they may be too late.
Dozens of conservative bloggers including, Michelle Malkin, Times Watch, and Little Green Footballs have been relentlessly scouring the Internet to find examples of media manipulation.
A recent analysis of how the media was manipulated after the Israeli bombing of Qana Lebanon illustrates this point brilliantly. In a short video the German news magazine Zapp shows how one rescuer, referred to as the Green Helmet, directs coverage of the events for the international press. Did Hezbollah choreograph the aftermath of the bombing to solicit outrage and sympathy in the Arab world? Many people believe that wide-scale manipulation of the press corps was and continues to be a reality.
Here is a link to a short survey on Photo-Digital Manipulation
The big question now is what happens to our historic collective memory if the images we view are continually the subject of disbelief? Will we become a nation of hate-mongering cynics?
For Hardt (1999), "Photographs, like all cultural products, have conditions and contexts that are based on historically determined cultural conventions, forms, beliefs, and perceptions."
Despite the current uproar concerning the veracity of photojournalistic practices, there is still the question of how these images, manipulated or not, impact foreign policy decision. Is there anyway to truly calculate the impact pictures have on public perception? Was Israel's cease-fire after the bombing of Qana a sign that the government was reacting to outside pressure after millions of people around the world were subjected to pictures of the dead, especially children?
Following how the media covers an issue like the present conflict in the Middle East is a little like watching a tennis match. One side hits the ball and the audience turns its collective head toward where the ball might land. Then, there is the return, and the audience is driven back. This is the way news images are presented to us. One series of pictures showing the news of the day, all of them fairly similar in content.
Washington Post writer Peter Baker (2006) observes, "With each new scene of carnage in southern Lebanon, outrage in the Arab world and Europe has intensified against Israel and its prime sponsor, raising the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials."
This summer our Violence and Visual Culture class at Southern Oregon University tracked the first two weeks of the conflict in four newspapers. Students counted the number, size, placement, source, and characteristics of the content from July 14 through July 31 in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian, and the Medford Mail Tribune.
Some of the questions we were trying to answer included:
Are there significantly more images showing dead and dying Lebanese civilians than Israeli civilians? If so, why? If there are more pictures of dead Lebanese than Israeli would world outcry change policy?
The content analysis conducted by the class examines only the beginning of the conflict -- a period of time when most the pictorial representations of the destruction in Lebanon and Israel occurred.
A total of 186 images in all four papers, with the lion's share (n=105) depicted in The New York Times.
Sixty-nine images depicted Lebanese civilians, while only 26 showed Israel civilians. In another area, 40 pictures showed Israel soldiers, while two images of Hezbollah fighters and 2 of Lebanese soldiers were used.
Can any conclusions be drawn from looking at images that play on the emotions of viewers?
Here are some data (early and unscrubbed) from the analysis. It would be interesting to have an online conversation about the possible implications of the role of images on public perception and foreign policy.
August 11, 2006 in adnan hajj qana,, blogging, Current Affairs, data-mining, Dennis Dunleavy, digital cameras, Education, Gary Hershorn Reuters, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, new technologies, New York Times front paqe, photo digital manipulation, Photo-ops, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, propaganda, Reuters, reuters adnan hajj, Southern Oregon University, teaching, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Photoshop: Propagandist's tool of choice
The Washington Times jumped on the Reuters bashing bandwagon this morning with an editorial criticizing the news agency for not noticing the obvious retouching of an image this week from Lebanon.
The editorial claims:
The important point here is that Mr. Hajj was doctoring his work for propaganda purposes. Part of Hezbollah's strategy is to outlast Israel until world opinion says the conflict has gone on long enough and it's time to quit with no punishment of the terrorists. As the terrorists in Iraq have figured out, one way to do that is by encouraging or playing up the inevitable civilian casualties. Hezbollah militants hide in Lebanese homes, while Hezbollah sympathizers in the media document the "disproportionate" Israeli military response to rockets fired from "peaceful" battery sites.
If you believe what The Washington Times is saying here, it looks like Reuters not only hired a photographer with poor photoshop skills, but that he is also Hezbollah sympathizer.
The Times is using it's soapbox to make assertions and draw feable conclusions without any real evidence to support its claim. That's what opinions are, substantiated and biased accounts of some event, person, or thing.
According to Editor & Publisher, Gary Hershorn, a picture editor for Reuters, believes that the freelancer Adnan Hajj did not manipulate the images for political purposes, but to only "make them better."
This is not the first time Hershorn has had to deal with questions of media bias. In September 2005, Mr. Hershorn edited an image of President Bush writing a note during a UN meeting. By enlarging the image, the editor was scrunitized for publicizing a very human moment in the life of a very public figure. With Hershorn's edit the content of the note became clear:
"I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible."
Although it would be difficult to say that Hershorn's focus on bringing the president's message into the public sphere, the Lebanonese issue doesn't seem to be making life any easier for the agency, especially in a world that already distrusts the media to a great extent.
Hershorn's defense of Hajj [the photographer in question] seems to steal a page out of the defensive public relations strategy book -- deflect, denounce, and deny.
Not only had Hajj manipulated the smoke coming from burning buildings in Beruit, but blogger Rusty Shackleford discovered the photog added a few extra flares fired from an Israel jet as well. Furthermore, conservative critics have accused Hajj and others of playing along with a Hezbollah propaganda scheme by staging the dramatic rescue of children in Beruit a last week.
To its credit Reuters is trying to respond to all the pressure it has been getting from its critics with what ever good graces it can muster. Editing policies have been tightened, the photographer fired, and all his pictures removed from circulation. Reuter's public apology and its attempts to not repeat the mistakes of the past week are commendable. In the end, transparency is the best defense against distrust and Reuters appears to be taking the initiative in this case.
At the same time, concerns over the ease in which the media can be manipulated by Hezbollah, Israel, or any other interest holder in the Middle East must remain in the public spotlight.
August 09, 2006 in adnan hajj qana,, blogging, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Gary Hershorn Reuters, George W. Bush, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Lebanon, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photo digital manipulation, Photo-ops, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, reuters adnan hajj, Southern Oregon University, teaching, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Optics of This War
Yesterday, the radio program Open Source with Christopher Lydon, jumped into an issue that I have been writing about over the past week -- images and the politics of images as they impinge on public consciousness as well as foreign policy.
Here are some of the questions Lydon poses to his guests , Marc Lynch, Annia Ciezadlo, and James Der Derian about the current Israeli-Lebanese war:
1. How important are the optics of this war, and who's managing them better?
2. What links can we draw from the outcome of the actual fighting to media coverage, public opinion and ultimately diplomacy?
3. Is Hezbollah's goal in this conflict territory and a prisoner exchange, or is it sympathy and support, the kind that rushes in from the wider Muslim world as the images from Qana begin to spread?
4. Children are dying in apartment blocks in Haifa, too; how does Israel win the diplomatic game when it's fighting to a draw on the ground and losing the war of images?
Each question requires detailed analysis, but what I would like to point out here is the notion of visual determinancy and the limitations of photography to convey the moral complexities of conflict.
Fortunately, an expanding body of literature in the field of images of war may help to more insightfully explicate the issues at hand.
The importance of the optics of this war, or any modern conflict, is increasingly obvious to many observers as well as foreign policy makers. David Perlmutter, in his book Photojournalism and Foreign Policy, addresses this issue extensively. For Perlmutter, "Sometimes a general 'CNN effect' subsuming the flood of imagery and its instantaneousness and vividness is ascribed as being able to influence, affect, or drive foreign policy" (5).
Certainly images from Vietnam, such as the street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner or the naked child fleeing her burning village after a Napalm air strike, contributed to U.S. foreign policy decision following a buildup of public outcry against the war. In addition, China was force to reconsider how it was dealing with the democracy movement at Tiananmen in 1989 following the release of a protestor standing in front of a line of tanks. Further, in1994, pictures showing dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by an angry mob became visual determinants in how that conflict was being managed.
The optics of war is driven by the images immediacy, intensity, and intimacy. Anchored by the saliency of headlines, images of war take on an ideological dimension that is often perceived as more forceful than written accounts.
According to Perlmutter:
News photographs are remarkably selective windows on the world. The myriad other vista of reality and events that occur beyond the range of the lens, the eye of the photographer, or the scope of the newscast or newspaper, are ignored.
Not only are images selective windows on the world, they comprise an ideological constellation of meaning that contribute to how we think, feel, and act. Pictures, as representative anecdotes of an event, may help to sum up an event but they may not move us beyond looking.
One explanation in terms of who is managing the optics or war better – Israel or Hezbollah – must explore the emotional and intellectual appeal of the content. Pictures of Israeli artillery firing off salvos against an unseen enemy do not have the same emotional and intellectual appeal as images of dead Lebanese children.
As Sontag contends, "Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. And photographs are a species of alchemy, for all that they are prized as a transparent account of reality" (Regarding the Pain of Others, page 81).
The frequency and immediacy of pictures of dead children elicit sympathy as well as outrage from viewers in ways that pictures of Israeli troop movements, artillery, or the distant shots buring buildings in Beirut cannot.
In this case, the repetition and numbers of images depicting the human cost of Israeli air strikes and bombardment allows for Hezbollah to take control in what is becoming a war of images as it is a war of fighting armies.
From an academic perspective, claiming that Hezbollah is winning a propaganda war based on anecdotal evidence is unsatisfactory. What needs to be examined here is a direct relationship or correlation between public opinion and the number, placement, and frequency of such images?
Photography, as a subtractive medium, can restrict our understanding what is happening by constraining our view of reality. When we are bombarded by pictures of dead Lebanese children our visual activity becomes concentrated by the emotional impact of an event framed by the photographer.
At the same time, news organizations visually respond predictably to the stories they put on their front pages. For example, most of Today's Front Page show an overwhelming number of newspapers using cliche hot weather pictures -- mostly people throwing water over their heads. In the history of modern newspaper design images reflect the spotlighting or highlighting of one series of events over another. In this instance, the picture may not be the same, but repeatedly the message is.
The majority of these pictures are showing us little other than something we already know, but nevertheless, editors feel obligated to visually represent the moment that otherwise could be said in one word -- HOT. The pictures, in this case, apologize for a lack of news beyond what most people are already experiencing.
Getting back to the problem of analyzing images from the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, I think it is important to remind ourselves of what Sontag observes:
"Central to modern expectations, and modern ethical feeling, is the conviction that war is an aberration, if an unstoppable one. That peace is the norm, if an unattainable one. This, of course, in not the way war has been regarder throughout history. War has been the norm and peace the exception" (74).
Considering this perspective, the visual determinancy of the frame contributes in many ways to this expectation -- that peace is the norm, or at least it is something that "ought" to be.
Looking again at the questions:
What links can we draw from the outcome of the actual fighting to media coverage, public opinion and ultimately diplomacy?
To be honest, without actually physically counting the number of images used, and without considering the content, placement, size, caption, and headline, we can conclude very little. All we are left with is an impression or the sense that there is a link between what the images show us and the public's reaction to them. Our interpretation of an image is fallible, just like any experience -- direct or indirect [thank you Charles for the clarification].
Since this conflict continues to escalate, it become imperative to suspend our inclination to rush to some conclusion in terms of impacting foreign policy. At the same time, clearly Israeli 48-hour cease-fire could be linked to the flood of gore and destruction after killing 56 people in Lebanon.
International condemnation of the attack in this case has given the Israeli government pause in rethinking how it manages its message in the foreign press. This can be seen already by examining the number of stories turning the violence back on Hezbollah's alledged use of civilians as human shield. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any pictures of guerrillas holding civilians gunpoint while they position their rockets against Israeli targets. All we get in the media is fingerpointing on both sides.
At issue is whether we can accept the commonsense viewpoint offer to us from one side or another. Ultimately, without having any visual evidence that this is the case we are left with only words to decide what is right and truthful.
August 02, 2006 in blogging, Christopher Lydon, Current Affairs, David Perlmutter, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, Headlines, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Lebanon, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, new technologies, New York Times front paqe, Photoblogging, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, propaganda, radio open source, Southern Oregon University, Susan Sontag, teaching, technology, The Washington Post, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Wikipedia | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Why Scholars Should Blog
It is quite clear that there are risks involved in blogging as a form of scholarship in progress -- risks that are more about exposing ideas not yet fully developed than anything that could pass as rigorous academic discourse at this point. In academe, the old adage "publish or perish" continues to remain a salient mantra for most.
Professors on tenure-track are often warned about the perils of deviating from antecedent practices and traditions that have fairly strict conventions in terms of who will earn tenure. The value of publishing a letter to the editor, for example, is not given the same weight as publishing research in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. All of this makes perfect sense, but where do professors who maintain active blogs fit in? Many edubloggers spend many hours maintaining blogs, collecting ideas and material, and responding to comments. What is the value of such practices?
As a former journalist, I justify the risks of blogging about academic ideas with the belief that the rewards of engaging people in a broader and deeper conversation about what we see and how things are made to be see is more far more interesting, relevant, and exciting.
The objective of writing in the moment on a blog is about engaging others -- students, teachers, professionals, and the general public -- in a more or less real-time conversation about the impact of images on society.
Some academics argue that scholarly energies are better served if one spends time researching, writing, and sending off articles to peer-reviewed journals. Again this make sense, but I also believe that there is room for both the ivory tower and the soap box in today's media illiterate world. Not only is there room for blogging from an educational perspective, but there is also a tremendous need to train the general public to move beyond a so-called commonsense viewpoint offered up in the mainstream press today. The commonsense viewpoint, in this case, refers to how so many of us refuse to question "news" as presented as "truth" by much of the mainstream media.
Scholars, with years of academic training behind them, are in a unique position to engage the public inside and outside of the classroom in new ways. Through an educational blog, scholars can provide readers with the intellectual tools required to engage in higher levels of analysis and discourse.
This past week has been a case study in how effective educational blogging can be. It has also been a watershed moment in my education as a teacher.
As I have engaged in a daily analysis of images from the war between the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel, several readers have commented on my analysis and even questioned my logic. Good for everyone that have been taking the time to engage in this conversation.
Thanks to Charles who has been graciously challenging me to clarify my interpretation of Whitehead's symbolism, as well as to Karin who asks, "How do you suggest that picture editors choose a picture/s to represent this situation?"
The objective of this exercise has always been about helping myself and others to understand the power of the visual in society. More recently, with the conflict raging in the Middle East, I have become more of an activist in terms of visual literacy. The first step of this process has been to engage others in learning to apply a variety of perspectives to the war of images currently being played out across the front pages of our nation's newspapers.
August 01, 2006 in blogging, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, First Amendment, intellectual property, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Lebanon, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, new technologies, Personal Media, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, semiotics, Southern Oregon University, teaching, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Wikipedia | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Questioning the "commonsense" of news photographs
In a one-two punch of emotion and despair, the insane and unjust reality of war hit home in yesterday's New York Times. Look carefully at the juxtaposing forces of signification on display in the full-page reproduction, left, and then move in for a closer study of the signified on the right.
How is it possible to fully understand the power of images? How can one poignant moment compare to another?
In our class Sex, Violence and Visual Culture this summer at Southern Oregon University we have started analyzing images from a social semiotic perspective. Social semiotics can be a useful in evaluating the meanings by questioning "commonsense" views of the world. By understanding what we see, as Jack Solomon observes, commonsense views of the world become "habitual opinions and perspectives of the tribe."
Using this approach, we examine the social and cultural constructions of reality that are presented to us as "commonsense" news. In his book "Signs of the Times," Solomon reminds us that cultures conceal ideologies as something made to appear natural.
Although tempted to understand the potential of seeing as limitless we are still very much constrained by the accumulation of social and cultural taboos, myths, filters, and semiotic codes.
Signs are codes imbued with meaning that help us function in the world. For example, traffic lights are sign systems that convey meaning through colors to organize the chaos of driving down a street – green (go), yellow (warning), red (stop).
Words are signs within a system of language. One person may call Iraqi insurgents "freedom fighters", while others label them "terrorists". Meanings become embedded in our cultural and collective memory through repetition and recall.
There is much to explore in the juxtaposition of the two images on the front of The New York Times in terms of how reality is filtered, screened, and coded for us. The Israeli soldiers grieving for a fallen comrade in the picture above symbolizes more than the death of a combatant. The picture signifies a turning point in the conflict that is supported by headlines and text. We perceive the violence that this image re-presents for us as a cultural barometer – something Solomon contends marks, "the dynamic moment of social history."
The violence of the conflict becomes filtered through a lens of what "naturally" follows conflict -- death and destruction. Prehaps the commonsense view I am resisting here is that the picture pleads with me to accept the consequences of a war that will not be resolved by the rhetoric of peace accords and cease-fires.
This point of view becomes even more important as my eyes move downward to see a Palestinian man buried a baby. We can see her tiny face framed by the traditional burial shroud. We can see the face of the man lowering the body to rest. The man is wearing a T-shirt with the words (another sign) selling T-Mobile… and we stop to pause for a second. We reflect on the meanings of these images – the dead baby and the man in the T-Mobile shirt.
Now, this is only one possible reading out of many, and this is the point of what happens in the signifying process. What we need to remember is that the meaning of an object does not reside in the object itself but in the interactions and discourse surrounding it. Many people may make little of the connection between how the child died and the man with the T-Mobile shirt. At the same time, others see the coincidence as a strange juxtaposition of contrasting ideas.
How do we learn to teach ourselves to question the "commonsense" view of what we are presented with as news?
The picture presents me with a puzzle of conflicting signifiers -- The dead baby and the T-shirt promoting high technology. I must work to decode the separate meanings and then somehow pull them together to construct a deeper understanding of the unsettling realities. I must work, therefore, to decode the "commonsense" and naturalize view of a world that becomes filtered through a system of signs legitimized as news.
"Globalization is often celebrated as an advance of human freedom in which individuals are ever freer to lead fives of their own choosing. Transnational flows of money, goods, and ideas, it is argued, will accompany an increasingly liberal international order in which individuals can participate in a global economy and culture."
David Singh Grewal, Network Power and Globalization, Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 17, 2003.
Dyadic relationships such as signifier and signified produce meaning as a sign.
Signifer = object
Signified = meaning
Together, the signifier and the signified produce a sign.
baby in death shroud = signified
dead baby killed by Israeli forces = signified
Taken together I interpret the meaning of what I see as
Civilian casualities as a sign of conflict.
At the same time, another layer of signification is added to the process as we evaluate the meaning of the man's T-shirt within the context of the conflict.
July 28, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photo digital manipulation, photography, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, propaganda, semiotics, signification, teaching, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Picturing the Language of Death
It must have been a difficult call. The editors of The Hartford Courant made a gutsy news decision last night before they sent the paper to bed by running a picture that speaks to the horror of what is happening in the Middle East.
All photographs become tools of political interest when they get embroiled in a contest of persauding us to see and know more about the violence we inflict upon one another.
With most U.S. newspapers sticking with less controversial subjects, such as the winner of the Tour de France or Tiger Woods victory at the British Open, what makes a newspaper like The Hartford Courant take the road less traveled?
Anyone wishing to claim senstationalism in this case just to sell a few more newspapers has lost their senses. If anything, displaying such realities on the front page takes a great deal of conviction and fortitude. The editors understand the responsibility of not hiding from the grim facts facing the foreign policy makers of this country.
For James Elkins, "All seeing is heated. It must always involve force and desire and intent" ( from The Object Stares Back, p. 21).
When I see the grieving faces in the newspaper collage below my eye my senses reel. The images stop me in my tracks and I become caught up in the language of death. Read the headlines: "War Fraught with Risk", "Death from the Sky", or "The Dead Cannot Wait" -- There is an interplay between the visual and textual that cements the signification or meaning-making process. The message is determine to possess us -- make us think -- make us act. Elkins observes, "Looking is not only active -- it is a form of the desire to possess or be possessed -- but also potentially violent."
Is there violence in the act of seeing violence?
I am a world away -- assaulted by a truth that is beyond comprehension -- and yet I have been cultivated to pictures of the dead and dying through a lifetime of seeing.
July 24, 2006 in blogging, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, Hartford Courant, Headlines, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Press Freedom, Southern Oregon University, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Pictures are force worth thinking about
In the war of words that coincides with every foreign conflict, it is the visual impact of images that is remembered most. Our collective memory is organized by the recognizable, and often stereotypical, depictions of destruction and death.
Chris Hedges national bestselling book, War is a force that gives us meaning , that war creates its own culture. "It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death."
Hedges understands the attraction of war as an inevitability -- something that adds purpose, reason, and meaning to life. "War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us."
What we see in the scenes of suffering and carnage in the Middle East may be considered an obscenity on one hand. However, the images are also part of a mythmaking process – stream of visual messages sold to us by politicians, generals, historians, filmmakers, writers, and even journalists (Hedges, p. 3). The mythmakers, according to Hedges, bestow war with qualities such as "excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty."
Pictures of war are all of these things and there is a sickness in them that we have seen many times before. In the continuing crisis in Lebanon, for example, apparently the United States media appears to be presenting a very different picture than its counterparts around the globe. Recently, a few commentators have taken note of the disparities in how the conflict is between covered by the U.S. media than it is by the rest of the world.
Washington Post writer Jefferson Morley has been keeping track of what the rest of the world has been saying about how the Western media's coverage of the crisis dramatically differs from the rest of the world.
In his analysis, Morley quotes from an article in the Lebanon Daily Star by Marc Sirois criticizing the highly sanitized versions of the news in the Western press. According to Sirois: "The vast majority of Western media reports do not accurately portray the fact that the vast majority of the dead are civilians, most of them women and children….For the most part Western television viewers, newspaper readers, and Web surfers are reading highly sanitized versions of the news, spun in such a way as to dilute the brutality of the Israeli onslaught and especially to ensure that blame is placed squarely on Lebanon in general and Hizbullah in particular."
What Morley and others seem to want us to think about is how the U.S. media spins a more sanitized version of the news without the audience ever questioning the coverage.
In his essay, Morley compares recent news reports from U.S. media with those of European news outlets. Apparently, the reportage is pretty skewed and reflects the foreign policy interests of the U.S. in the region. Morley discovered that while the U.S. media focused predominantly on the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Lebanon this past Wednesday, European news agencies were reporting the increasing number of civilians being killed in the conflict.
Pictures from this past week playing up the evacuation of U.S. families from Lebanon in the news media support this claim. At the same time, the killing of Lebanese civilians, especially children by Israeli air strikes was downplayed. Morley concludes, "The disparate reaction to Lebanon's civilian casualties may simply reflect the larger beliefs of the societies in which journalists work."
At this point, we should reconsider what exactly is the work of journalists. Is it a journalist's job to inculcate readers with particular tastes, values, and ideologies? As a journalist, turned educator, it is impossible to not to think about how news decisions are made.
Increasingly it is clear to me that the events that shape what is determined to be news are interpreted through a complex array of filters -- personal, social, professional, institutional, cultural, and even political. The importance to journalism, and ultimately public confidence in the press, is that we should be able to recognize and acknowledge our biases and make transparent the processes in which news is gathered and presented.
July 23, 2006 in blogging, Chris Hedges, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, Google, images of violence, intellectual property, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, new technologies, New York Times front paqe, photo digital manipulation, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Southern Oregon University, sustainability, teaching, technology, The Washington Post, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Washington Post, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Visual hegemony and The New York Times front page
When it comes to understanding how people consume pictures either as news, information, or entertainment we need to think in terms of how social reality is constructed for us by the gatekeepers and agenda setters of the world.
How do we know what something is supposed to represent or mean without some sort of reference to relate it to?
For those fortunate to have the gift of sight, much of our informational system is based on the repetition and recall of images.
In reviewing the front page display of three lead images in The New York Times today there is an interesting example of how social realities are constructed through the use and positioning of images in the news. In this case, viewers are presented with three distinct impressions of the conflict in the Middle East.
However, the signification of the overall message is dependent on how the pictures interact with one another. In another sense, there is a gestalt to the display as each image builds meaning off one another. In other words, the collective meaning of the three pictures subordinates the power of reading the images individually.
The New York Times editors have a hierarchy of importance in mind when they arrange the picture of a Marine escorting evacuees off a beach above and bigger than two smaller supporting images – one showing Hezbollah fighters and the other depicting a corpse.
There is symmetry to the arrangement of visual elements here that provides a sense of authority for the narrative. The arrangement of the pictures -- two below and one above --is a structurally semiotic triad of meaning -- icon, index and symbol.
From a semiotic perspective, the combination of these images tells a story through a relationship of signs -- some more symbolic in nature than others. All three images are iconic, but the two images below rely heavily on the juxtaposition of index against symbolism.
The picture of the fighters on the left acts as an index or something that is pointing to the symbolism of the corpse on the right. In other words, this combination of images is a construction with a very pointed message. In this case, the picture of the fighters signifies death, terror, fear, and insecurity in relation to the adjacent corpse. Meanwhile, the picture of the Marine above signifies security, safety, and escape from the two images below.
No doubt, the editors are carefully constructing a visual narrative for the reader designed to frame the current crisis in a specific way.
There is a visual hegemony to the arrangement of these pictures – one that suggests how viewers are directed to a specific ideology in ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling about events. Antonio Gramsci observed that people are not only subordinated to the will of a dominant group through physical and mental coercion, but also through repeated exposure, cultivation and indoctrination to a set of prevailing values, attitudes, and ideas.
This is what I read through the editor's selection, scaling, and positioning of images on a page. In some ways, perhaps, my interpretation is a bit too excessive and paranoid. It could be that my reading may be too critical for some in that it suggests that the gatekeepers of information have an agenda and motive for deciding what is news that is not always objective and unbiased.
Then again, for others, thinking about how images construct realities may be well worthwhile considering.
July 21, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Design, Headlines, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, New York Times front paqe, Photo-ops, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, propaganda, semiotics, Southern Oregon University, teaching, visual journalism education, visual violence, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Pictures that Stick
It is a curiosity that in a world that is literally bombarded with visual images, the front pages of many newspapers in the U.S. are fairly consistent in displaying nearly the same pictures. When it comes to representing the "big" international news events in terms of the thousands of images that are produced daily typically a couple of images seem to be played over and over again on front pages.
We saw this happen yesterday when a majority of newspapers opted to run one or two of the same pictures covering the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Beirut. The two most iconic images used yesterday stand out because they are more or less benign in terms of the conflict. The media turns its lens away from the bombing of the past week to focus on what it thinks Americans need to know. The bombings persists yet the recounts the major news of the day through an iconization of events in one or two pictures.
The pictures displayed across the front pages clearly possess emotional and aesthetic qualities, but are they truthful to the complexities facing the Middle East at this moment in time. Where are the images from Afghanistan and Iraq?
Looking at the pictures above, the first of the two most used images shows children dressed in flight helmets. In what appears a theatrical moment the children are prepared to escorted out the country. No matter what, editors know that pictures of children and animals always evoke the strongest emotional responses from viewers.
In the second image, a shilouette of soliders loadinng a cargo plan is backlight by the setting sun. This image works because of its graphic, rather than its emotional appeal.
In terms of cultural hegemony, it is fascinating to take notice of the fact that so many newspapers across the country seem to single-mindedly select pretty much the same image to represents the "big" news of the day.
July 20, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photo digital manipulation, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Southern Oregon University, teaching, visual journalism education, visual violence, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Photojournalism and Propaganda: Are Photo-Ops Fact or Fiction?
Do photojournalists intentionally set out to stir up controversy and debate by making pictures that may later offend viewers?
This is the substance of a question raised by a reader this morning about a recent news photograph showing Israeli children signing bombs as "gifts" to explode over Lebanon. [NOTE: In addition to the news image mentioned above, the website linked here contains graphic images of violence].
The simplest answer to this question, from a photojournalist's perspective, would be NO. Photojournalists do not set out to stir up debate on grounds that he or she adheres to the fundamentals of factualism as the basis for proscribed professional conduct. Photojournalists conceive of themselves as eyewitnesses not propagandists. Photojournalists conceive of themselves as reporters not as patsies for publicists.
That's one viewpoint. Now, how about another perspective?
However, this does not mean that photojournalists cannot be exploited or used to prime audiences or sell ideologies.
In this case, what the photojournalists recorded presumably was a fact. There was a group of Israeli children gathered to write hate messages on bombs to be used in the escalating conflict in Lebanon.
Is this news? By most journalistic standards this activity would be considered as newsworthy as any other type of staged event. The only criticism I have here – something that I have encountered many times in my own career – is that many photojournalists forget about how the event is "staged" for the camera before hand. Many photojournalists, myself included, tend to get caught up with "getting the picture" and do not generally indulge in evaluating the moral complexities or consequences of a particular event unfolding before them and for them.
In this case, we don't know if the photographers just happened to come along at the time when the children gathered to sign the bombs or if someone had arranged for the journalists to be there. My strongest instincts suggest the latter may be the case.
Let's face it, the media are constantly being used to propagandize a particular ideology in order to gain and maintain power. The visual message, especially when children are involved, is extremely persuasive. Could you imagine how much a newspaper or television station would charge a government or political group to run a full-page advertisement to sell the same message to the public? And that's if the news organization would even agree to run such a highly political statement in the first place.
However, if the idea reaches us as "news", the political message is buried under the auspices of legitimate news reportage. Valentin Groebner, in his recent book, Defaced: The visual culture of violence in the Late Middle Ages, argues, "an image is always an inner picture of the mind of the beholder" (p. 34).
For Groebner, with me looking again at the picture of the children signing bombs, "violence against others cannot be grasped directly but is only conveyed via its depiction." In this scene, the audience is being primed for the violence to come in a value added sort of way. Is this image of the children a picture of violence as we are used to conceiving of them? Indirectly and subconsciously, the image very much signifies violence and destruction in our minds. We know what is to come, and the children are playing a part in it.
The picture is a photo-op. Obviously; the media, in this case, did not appear to be all that concerned with the implications of how others might react to seeing the children writing on bombs. After all, this is not how the media operates.
Despite the heavy burden of reporting truthfully, photojournalism, or craft and art of making images appear as news, has always been a very effective way for governments, armies, groups, or individuals to get a "hot button" topic out to the public.
News pictures distributed through credible sources legitimize social and political activity.
We have historical precedent to look to when it comes to bomb graffiti.
In 1998, the mainstream press circulated a picture showing a picture of a missile covered with graffiti to be used against Iraq. On the side of the missile, one soldier wrote, "Here's a Ramadan present."
Similar to the current image of children writing on bombs, this picture is a message designed to instill fear and terror in the hearts and minds of others. The images remind us how removed we have become from our capacity to hate and destroy one another. The pictures, used by the media in this way, are signs of ritualized activity associated with making violence against other human beings seem normal. In another sense, the image makes something as impersonal as a bomb become much more personal. In other words, a picture of children signing bombs makes something typically invisible highly visible. We can attach all sorts "wrongs" to the intent of pictures from a moral perspective, but does this in some way implicate the people who make images?
Are photojournalists complicit in stirring up controversy and debate in times of conflict by allowing themselves to cover activities that are clearly created to foment violence? In this sense, they may well be. Photojournalists are after all, part of an informational system that requires the public to believe that what they report is free from overt political interest and patronage. Photojournalists are the visual errand boys and girls that deliver highly stylized, very effective, and often, very persuasive views of the world around us.
July 19, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Family Values, images of violence, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, Photo-ops, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Let the victims be seen and known
Yesterday, I wrote about the predictable pattern of images we can expect to see during the early, middle and later stages of modern conflict. As I surveyed the front pages of more than 500 newspapers on the Today's Front Page Website I was struck by the conformity of the image selection and display.
I am bringing this up again because I was stunned by how only two newspapers chose to empathize with the victims by showing tight detailed pictures of a grieving woman and an injured child.
It should be noted that a majority of U.S. newspapers selected not to use any images from the crisis in the Middle East on the front page. Those that did run chose to focus on wider angle images that serve to provide a context for understanding the destruction.
This brings us to challenging and confounding claim that the media in this country is ultra liberal. Contrary to popular belief, most of the treatment of front page image selection is pretty conservative.
It takes courage for newspapers to select images that put a human face on the front page. Most of us don't want to be reminded of the true cost of war -- civilian deaths.
What is really interesting about how the use of violent imagery plays out incrementally as the war progress is that just as predicted today's coverage is saturated with images of refugees fleeing the conflict.
July 18, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Israeli Lebanon conflict, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, photo digital manipulation, Photoblogging, photoblogs, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, Southern Oregon University, teaching, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
DISPATCHED
It is sobering to review the number of journalists being killed in Iraq in comparison to other conflicts.
July 07, 2006 in censorship, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Jarhead, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, visual journalism education, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Framing Reality through Calamity
Reality is about coming to terms with human experience.
Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to make sense of what we see, feel and think about.
Often, I have have a hard time believing that living in a visual culture such as ours makes visual perception any easier. In fact, I would suggest that since the advancement of optical prosthetics, like cameras, coming to terms with what is "reality" has become actually much more mediated and extenuated.
Marshall McLuhan was a careful observer of the interstice between technology and humanity.
McLuhan understood, that what some people call development and progress, causes alarm for others. He belived that there is a psychic and physical cost of technological innovation and enterprise that is often overlooked in modern times.
When we privilege one sense over another, are we inadvertently changing the course of our interactions with the world—with how we listen, taste and touch? The demands of modern-day visual encounters, those images we consume through watching television, reading magazines, or surfing the Internet, place us in a situation where we do more looking than actual seeing.
I seem to be stuck in a vicious cycle of thinking about images that injure. At the risk of wearing out my soapbox, I find myself coming back to the images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
It has been three years since pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq exposed the public to what turn out to be one of the defining moments of the conflict.
The graphic scenes of humiliation and torture that began to appear in April 2004 subvert any claims to a moral victory in Iraq by U.S. and coalition forces. In addition, images taken during an investigation into a 2005 massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqis in Haditha by U.S. forces show the power of pictures as evidence of violence and suffering.
More than 250 images and nearly two-dozen videos made by guards at the prison are now part of our national collective memory of the war.
Reduced to grainy snapshots depicting the horror and deprivation of prisoners of war, a simple truth reveals how capable we are of inflicting injustice on humanity.
The reality recorded here, of course, is not new in the history of so-called civilization, but it does provide "hard" evidence of our ability to do great harm in the name of all that is good about our country. Perhaps, what these images represent is far more than what they depict. The images signify the mockery of our nation as peaceful, tolerant, and just.
Has anything changed in the time since the release of the first set of prison abuse pictures?
Can images contribute to justice served?
A few people are now in jail and forgotten in the eyes of the media. A few people have been demoted in rank and have returned to obscurity.
Through the lens, a central narrative in this conflict has been dutifully recorded for prosperity and it's not a pretty picture.
How can we look at these images of tortured prisoners and see human beings?
One reading of these images is that they are not pictures of people at all. These are pictures of things. Objects. Once pictured, people are reduced to objects of possession. Those who dare to understand the implications of such images are singed with grief. Something insidiously evil is at work in the world today and we've got pictures to prove it.
These images – a naked truth revealing how human beings are strapped, bloodied, humiliated, and stripped of dignity – signify a larger tragedy in the cultural pathology of a society saturated with visual messages. We may look at these pictures and remain unmoved. We may see them but still be blinded by apathy and what can only be called the propaganda of mass distraction.
Does the insistent bombardment of visually mediated messages depicting suffering and deprivation reduce our capacity to feel?
Sontag observed, "In a modern life – a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention – it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad."
Writers use frames to organize ideas and concepts into meaningful structures. Take any issue reported in the news today – war, poverty, justice, economics, education, environment – and frames emerge as overarching structures in presenting an opinion.
At the center of an argument, idea, opinion, commentary, analysis, or editorial is a frame – a general abstraction that envelops a wider array of phenomena. Framing is way in which communicators define specific social realities. For Hertog & McLeod (2001), "Some of the most powerful are myths, narratives, and metaphors that resonate within the culture."
Hertog & McLeod argue that frames have tremendous symbolic power, carry excess meaning, and are widely recognized within a society. For instance, the use of the "horse race" metaphor helps to frame a debate in a political election in terms of winners and losers.
Brummett (1999) looks to theorist Kenneth Burke's idea of the "representative anecdote" in terms of understanding how the media frame the news. "Because the audience expects the world to be mediated to them dramatically, and because the media do so by calling up standard, recurrent, culturally ingrained types of dramas, the anecdotal for of the media fits well with Burke's notion of form as the arousing and satisfying of expectations. We expect newscasts of Presidential election results to be cast into a "horse-race" plot, for instance" (p. 483).
Frames can be thought of as both cognitive and cultural structures used to understand the social world. "Frames provide the unexpressed but shared knowledge of communicators that allows each to engage in discussion that presumes a set of shared assumptions" (Hertog & McLeod, p. 141).
Stephen Reese suggests, "Frames are organizing principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world" (p. 140).
Words and images combine, sometimes colliding, to frame social reality by linking assigned meanings and concept that universally understood within a culture. Early this year, the Sago mine disaster illustrated how news story develop through the cognitive and culture structuring of frames. Headlines such as "Miner Miracle", "Miracle in the Mine", " Miracle in West Virginia", reveal the framing of a phenomenon. Framing an event as a miracle implies divine and supernatural intervention in the course of human affairs.
Frames appear dependent on mental imagery that is tied to cultural and social constructs. In turn, the frame functions sum up the essence of something. The frame can be considered in terms of "miracle" a symbolic strategy in the formation of a discourse. The visual and verbal language encompassing the "miracle" frame becomes a persuasive determinant in the construction of how people may process calamity and trauma.
The "miracle" is a dramatic framing of a plot. This is hardly the first time, nor the last, that the media has used the frame of a "miracle" to explain an event. The term has become a master metaphor for passing off anything that cannot be easily understood.
June 28, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Fair Use , Family Values, First Amendment, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, prisoner abuse, propaganda, public journalism, Southern Oregon University, Susan Sontag, sustainability, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, visual violence, war photography, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Things I take for Granted: Press Freedom
Despite everything said about the media in this country, it is important once in a while to think about how lucky we are to have constitutional rights protecting our ability to collect and report information.
This evening I was glancing over a roundup of alerts from the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), a global network of 72 organizations working to defend and promote the right to free expression.
In a typical week, IFEX along with other non-governmental groups working to secure press freedom around the world report on dozens of cases involving censorship, abuse, and violence against media workers.
For example, from June 5 - 9 the group reported on incidents against press freedoms in more than 30 countries. Everyday around the world newspapers are closed by repressive regimes, journalists beaten and threatened by police and military, websites pulled off-line, and photojournalists jailed.
June 14, 2006 in Broadcast Journalism, Civil Rights, CNN, Copyright, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Education, Google, IFEX, Internet Learning, Iraq, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Photojournalism, Press Freedom | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Images as Evidence
Front page coverage heralding al-Zarqawi's death on a few tabloid newspapers yesterday was predictable. The bloodied face of the militant was significant in that it helps to redirect some of the criticism against the U.S. military engagement in Iraq. Pictures have been used for political propaganda since the invention of the halftone printing process in the 1880s.
Susan Sontag in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) observes, "Ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings" (p.86).
Consider the The New York Post's use of inflammatory commentary superimposed over the dead face Abu Masub al-Zarqawi. As close to a supermarket table as so-called legitimate media may get, the Post's use of the text-bubbled "Warm up the Virgins" coming from al-Zarqawi's battered face signifies our insatiable fascination with death and sex. The reference to virgins on the cover refers to the beliefs some extremists hold that if an individual dies a martyr they will be met by 40 virgins in the afterlife.
Here the media plays a role in constructing a reality that extends beyond the image. The language aims to offend deeply by connecting death to sexual activity. The juxtaposition of the text bubble coming from the dead man's mouth calling for "virgins" may be perceived not as a object of contemplation but as one of gallows humor and prurient interest.
Again as Sontag notes, "An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen" (Regarding the Pain of Others, p. 105).
In this case, American audiences are generally shielded from images of the dead. But in this case, the dead was the "enemy" -- he was not just another human being. Therefore, how we use his image and how often it is seen, dead or alive, is part of constructing a pathology of hatred and fear in the audience's mind.
Imagine viewing a full-size front page picture of a U.S. Marine killed in action with a text bubble added to suggest a final thought or desire. Readers would burn down the newspaper. Even the idea of suggesting that such an image would ever make the front page of newspaper seems so wrong. Nevertheless, picturing the death of an individual who has been demonized as evil incarnate appears reasonable for a government set on winning the public relations war in the American press.
There were actually a variety of the death image released to the media -- one picture showing the bloodied and swollen face and another image after the body had been cleaned up. In this instance, the pentagon provided two versions for public consumption.
Alexandra Fuche of the BBC reports in "Parading the Dead" that showing the bodies of dead in Iraq is "controversial on religious grounds, as Muslim tradition requires corpses to be buried as quickly as possible."
Using imagery of pain and death in order to make a point or prove something to one group may provoke excitement and a blacklash of violence from other groups. There is a price to be paid for from the visual propaganda used on both sides of this conflict. Whether it is a video showing Islamic extremists beheading hostages, or pictures of dead sectarian leaders, the of such imagery can only escalate tensions.
June 09, 2006 in al-zarqawi, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Photojournalism, Picture Editing, Southern Oregon University, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Is war photography and other visual violence necessary?
It's been more than a decade since I last looked at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic work "Flow" but finding it again on a bookshelf was an invitation to reflect on the role of photography in society. Although Csikszentmihalyi focuses on the psychology of optimal experience, I have always read his work through a photographic filter.
When thinking about happiness, or what makes people happy, Csikszentmihalyi reminds us "the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind." Yet we spend our lifetimes in search of happiness against all odds, natural and human.
Photography came about in history partly as a way to compensate for the failings of human memory as well as a way to fix our imaginations in space and time.
We hold up mental pictures to remind ourselves of things. We hold up, in our mind's eye, two pictures. One picture shows us as things once were and the other picture reveals all things hoped for. The mental pictures of our world we hold up for ourselves are not entirely real. These mental images are mediated by our hopes and fears – constructed for us by the media.
We are bombarded with visually mediated messages in society today that may attempt to construct feelings of order and stability for us. We are comforted with the illusion that photographs may bring a sense of calm and control over the chaos that is all around us. The pictures, even the most troubling and violent ones, act to bring about a sense of knowing and being there.
Last week, Annie asked a provocative question that I continue to struggle with. The thesis of her reports postulates: "Is war photography and other visual violence necessary?"
Intuitively, I want to respond with an absolute yes. We need images to shock us into the present and to remind us of all past injustices and sufferings in the world.
Images of war are critical in building shaping public consciousness.
Images from past conflicts such as Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima flag-raising contributed to the U.S. war effort in the Pacific during WWII. At the same time, decades later, Nick Ut's picture of a young girl fleeing a napalm attack in Viet Nam and John Filo's image at Kent State helped to turn the tide of public opinion against continued U.S. foreign intervention in the region.
Do images from our present war, especially the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, help to foment discontent as in past conflicts?
Yes. In fact, the U.S. military is now bracing itself for another scandal involving atrocities in Iraq – atrocities that have been caught on videotape by an Iraqi journalism student. According to USA Today, "Pentagon investigators believe Marines committed unprovoked murder in the deaths of about two dozen people at Haditha in November."
Do we need visual proof to validate such claims? Yes, not only do we need pictures, but we need them to be from a reliable source.
Annie's question becomes even more important in society today.
The idea of asking the question of whether war photography is necessary speaks to a bigger issue – one suggesting that war images no longer function in the same ways as they have in the past.
Perhaps images of violence have become such a normal part of our visual diet that they no longer move us. Perhaps these images no longer feed our worst imaginable fears, because we have seen them all before – another war, another picture of death and violence.
If true, then, we as a society are moving insidiously closer away from an enlightened civilization and more toward a new Dark Age.
Pictures of war, even though they may longer have the same impact and those in the past, still need to be taken so that they will become part of our collective memory, history, and remain in our consciousness.
May 27, 2006 in First Amendment, images of violence, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, President Bush, prisoner abuse, Southern Oregon University, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, war photography, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Need For Truth and Compassion
Photo Credit: The Washington Post
Perhaps it is in our best interest to remain silent on matters of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
After all, this is old news now and we don't need to be reminded of the violence of suffered by Iraqis in the custody U.S. troops. However, the release of yet more pictures, videos and testimonies of prisoner abuse makes turning away from this reality increasingly difficult.
Last week, the Washington Post obtained more images, specifically videos and testimonies from detainees and Abu Ghraib – an investigation that should propel this story back into the realm of public discourse.
Scott Higham and Joe Stephens report in, "New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge Abu Ghraib Detainees' Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings," that the testimonies help to explain many of the already iconic images released more than two years ago to the American public.
"The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers."
Even after learning about the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, there seems to be only minimal coverage on the issue in the mainstream media. Other matters, such as immigration reform and the deployment of the National Guard along the U.S.-Mexican border appear to preoccupy much of the reportage. Interestingly, a Google search for news reportage under the heading of Abu Ghraib reveals more than 5, 000 posts between May 19 and April 22.
However, a Technorati search of the Blogosphere provides more than 88,000 hits, many of them just a few days old. What this suggests, something that is speculative at best is that bloggers are actively more passionate about generating and maintaining public discourse about the abuse scandal than the mainstream media is.
In January 2006, Bruce Jackson complains in the political newsletter "Counterpunch" how the reality of the war in Iraq has been squelched by mainstream media's comfort level with sensitive and controversial images. "The daily press and evening news are so attuned to our sensitivity or sensibility they just don't want to offend us," Jackson notes.
In other words, much of the mainstream media fail to fulfill their role in society by arbitrating what can and cannot be seen. The press becomes censored not only by the government but also by itself because of the possibility that the images may be too much to bear for the average person.
Now, people are turning to alternative sources such as blogs and Web sites to see these graphic and disturbing images.
How can we find the truth in a world so bombarded with questionable information? If the mainstream media does not tell us what we need to know because they are afraid of offending us and bloggers and Web sites tell us more than we want to know, where is the balance?
May 21, 2006 in Civil Rights, Dennis Dunleavy, Freedom of Information Act FOIA, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Photoblogging, prisoner abuse, Southern Oregon University, technology, The Washington Post, visual journalism education, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Moral Complexities: A Criticism of Mainstream Media
Documentary photojournalist Roger LeMoyne expresses with great clarity the potential of photography in society. In an interview with Christopher Grabowski, LeMoyne criticizes the mainstream media for reducing stories about the human condition to black and white issues.
LeMoyne observes:
In general, the media loves stories that are black and white, they are not very happy dealing with moral complexities, it's hard to tell a good story about murky issues.
It is not hard to see the truth in what LeMoyne has to say. Almost all issues in today's news, from the war on Iraq to the debate over U.S. immigration, present moral complexities that cannot be broken down to simply one right or one wrong. Yet, this is the perception of the typical coverage of these issues in the mainstream issue. At the same time, let's not blame the superficiality of today's news coverage solely on the media. Let's also look at how U.S. culture establishes and maintains the dumbing down of media content. People appear quick to criticize the press on its coverage of major issues, yet fail to look at their own behaviors that often leaves little time for serious issues facing our nation. We are so busy taking care of ourselves that many issues outside of our own personal concerns capture our interest or attention. It is hard work to keep informed on issues involving moral complexities. Often once we become attached to one issue, in the sense of trying to understand it, we become distracted by other concerns. The media feeds our fragmented and discontinuous stream of knowing the world in substantive ways. But let's not blame the media entirely.
The commercial media in this country has been forced to compromise providing audiences with insight and depth on complex stories, such as Katrina or health care, because it finds itself constrained by space (in print) and by time (in broadcast). Time and space in this country are commodities in which a profit must be turned.
Now, the Internet does make it possible to present morally complex stories in new ways, but it appears that our eyes and ears are already accustomed to and conditioned by a culture of sound bites, photo ops, and leads that bleed.
In its current configuration, mainstream media often unintentionally manages to denigrate and humiliate others when reporting on complex stories. Even our language, as photographers, reduces human beings to "subjects" and "things."
For photojournalists like LeMoyne trying to break through the firewall of black and white reportage is a full-time mission. LeMoyne engages photography as an empathic process -- one that attempts to fully respect the integrity and dignity of those who are willing to open their lives to the world for the causes of justice and reform. Many times issues become a sort of personal crusade not only in the reportage but also in convincing editors that their stories are worthy of publication. As LeMoyne notes:
It is possible to denigrate and humiliate people with photography. Certainly a lot of people in developing countries are afraid to be humiliated by the media... Dignity is an essential part of being human, and somehow beautiful photographs are more likely to preserve people's dignity than ugly ones. I think there is a value to that.
I try to take the pictures that are resonant of truth of the situation, and that's what's ultimately important. It counts how truthful and how powerful the pictures are.
May 18, 2006 in Ashland, Oregon, Broadcast Journalism, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, Documentary Photography, Education, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, media consolidation, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, Moral complexity, Personal Media, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism criticism, photojournalism education, propaganda, Roger LeMoyne, Southern Oregon University, sustainability, teaching, visual journalism education, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A Tale of Two Pictures: Image Ethics and Abu Ghraib at Year Two
Two years have come and gone since the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq opened our eyes to what may be one of the most critical and defining moments of this conflict.
The graphic scenes of humiliation and torture that began to appear in April 2004 subvert any claims to a moral victory in Iraq by U.S. and coalition forces. More than 275 images and nearly two-dozen videos made by guards at the prison are now part of our national collective memory of the war.
The reality recorded here, of course, is not new in the history of so-called civilization, but it does provide "hard" evidence of our ability to do great harm in the name of all that is good about our country.
What these images signify for me may upset many people, but I feel compelled to speak my mind.
Naturally, the actions of a few do not represent the majority. Yet, pictures like those from Abu Ghraib send a strong message to the rest of the world -- a picture that paints a very sobering and despicable characterization of America as the so-called leader of the free world.
The Abu Ghraib images represent far more than the brutality depicted.
These pictures contradict the image we hold about ourselves as a fair-minded and good-hearted people. In a sense, we reject what these images tell the rest of the world about us as a people because we do not believe that we could ever commit such heinous acts.
The pictures signify a mockery of everything we are taught to believe in about our nation. For me, the reality of these images destroys any illusion I may have had about America as peaceful, tolerant, and just nation. These pictures shock me into a realization of how callous and inhumane we can be under the pretext of liberation, democracy and freedom. The shame of these images will haunt future generations of Americans and it is a legacy that I am not prepare to ever get comfortable with.
Has justice been served?
Through the lens, a central narrative in this conflict has been dutifully recorded for prosperity -- it's not a pretty picture.
One reading of these images is that they are not pictures of people at all. These are pictures of things.
Objects.
Once pictured, people are reduced to objects of possession and personal property. Those who dare to understand the implications of such images are singed with grief.
Something insidiously evil is at work in the world today and we've got pictures to prove it.
Among the pile of images that emerged from the cameras of prison guards at Abu Ghraib, a few have become emblematic of the human rights scandal.
I would like to discuss the power of one of these images as a social artifact of our times. More importantly, I would like to explore how picture editing plays a significant role in the construction of public perceptions of events.
When the New Yorker, and later CBS' 60 minutes, brought the images to light in April 2004, a picture showing a prisoner standing on a box in a Christ-like pose, captivated the imagination of millions.
Wires had been attached to the hooded man's hands, and he was told that if he moved he would be electrocuted. In the picture originally released by the mainstream media, there is an aesthetic balance to the frame. The prisoner is centered against a background of yellowed tile.
The hood, poncho, and outstretched arms of the man provide a sense of symmetry. This geometric composition contributes to the viewer's reading by directing the eye to the dominant subject. The composition is compelling and appeals to our imagination and emotions.
Sarah Boxer of the New York Times contends, "Of all the photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison, one alone [the hooded man] has become the icon of the abuse."
Boxer's analysis of the image suggests the power of photography to evoke deep emotions. Boxer writes:
"As a symbolic shape, the hood is almost as strong as a cross. The difference is that the hood has generally been the sign of the persecutor, not of the victim. It is the uniform of the executioner, the sheet of the Klansman, the mask of Death. Until now. In these images, you can see the hood's meaning begin to change and take root."
Theorist Barry Brummett observes that audiences expect "the world to be mediated to them dramatically…. because the media do so by calling up standard, recurrent, culturally ingrained types of dramas."
It is not clear to me that the image of the "hooded man" was cropped intentionally to solicit more immediate reaction and pity from viewers. If the picture was cropped it was probably done more out of routine than overt censorship of other seemingly less important elements in the frame.
This is where the tale of the two images comes into conflict, because it is the extraneous elements cropped from the frame that reveal another reality – one that shows the amateurish competence as well as the indifference of the photographers.
Within the past year, a second uncropped version of the "hooded man" image has surfaced.
In this frame, a guard is show to the far right of the image. The prisoner remains centered but the space on either side of him provides a context that is missing from the cropped version.
According to Salon, the Criminal Investigation Command (CID) caption on the picture states that it was "11:04 p.m. on Nov. 4, 2003 and placed in this position by Spc. Sabrina Harman and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II. Both took pictures as a joke. Instructed if moved would be electrocuted. Staff Sgt. Frederick is depicted with a Cyber Shot camera in his hands."
This caption becomes important when compared to same image released by anti-war groups on the Internet, which suggest that Frederick is clipping his nails.
What are the ethics of cropping an image in a case like the hooded man?
It is important to note that I am assuming the two images come from the same source here. I am only guessing that the first tightly cropped frame is version of the second, more loosely composed image. Nevertheless, my speculation brings up an important issue for students of photojournalism.
Can a crop change the meaning of an image? If so, can the crop be considered to be unethical by contemporary standards and practices?
For Jason Fithian, a senior photojournalism student at San Jose State University, "I totally think cropping out the Sargent changed the whole perception of the image. While it is closely cropped, it gives a sense of isolation, as if nobody is around.
"I think cropping the image does change the integrity of the image and gives the viewer another story. Closely cropping the image can mislead readers and is clearly a violation of ethics."
Fithian researched some of the National Press Photographers Association and Associated Press guidelines governing photographic manipulation to make a strong case for manipulation.
Fithian suggests that cropping may be considered a form of manipulation since it significantly changes the meaning of the image.
He writes:
Looking at ethical guidelines, NPPA's ethical policies, number six states, "Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects."
One of AP's guidelines state, "Minor adjustments in Photoshop are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, and normal toning and color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction (analogous to the burning and dodging often used in darkroom processing of images) and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph." Again, cropping out the Sargent takes away from the authenticity of the photograph and does not give the audience an accurate portrayal of what is actually occurring.
One could possibly believe wartime censorship is at hand for the elimination of the Sargent While these images are a few years old, it was at a time when there was more support for the war. As more and more people began to find out what is really going on overseas and how the US participates in torture and in violation of UN Human Rights, opinions change.
I believe the public does have a right to know what is going on overseas and to crop out the Sargent in the image is clearly not giving the citizens an accurate portrayal.
May 17, 2006 in America's Army, censorship, Civil Rights, Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, digital cameras, Documentary Photography, Education, Freedom of Information Act FOIA, images of violence, Internet Learning, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism, Journalism Southern Oregon University, Media Criticism, Media Ethics, Media Manipulation, photo digital manipulation, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism education, Picture Editing, point and shoot cameras, Press Freedom, prisoner abuse, propaganda, public domain, Southern Oregon University, Susan Sontag, teaching, technology, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor, war photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Secular Pictures in a Sectarian War
Can anything come from the knowledge of the terrible suffering streaming into our consciousness from the War on Iraq? Increasingly, the pictures are more real and raw then what we have become used to seeing since the war began in March 2003.
For example, there is a picture made recently by Reuters photojournalist Mahmoud Raouf of a pickup truck carrying a load of battered and bloodied bodies through the streets of Eastern Baghdad.
The gate of the pickup truck is down, exposing the corpses to all who care to see. There are at least three bodies visibly stacked like cord wood tossed akimbo.
There are ropes binding the bodies, twisted limbs, no faces are to be seen – yet, there are hints of horror. The day appears warm and the landscape is soaked in sunshine. The driver of the pickup has his window rolled down; a brown-skinned elbow sticks out -- casually. The truck is following other official vehicles in a convoy. To the right, a procession of older-model cars moving in the opposite lane of traffic appears to have stopped or is moving very slowly.
Michael Shaw on his BagNewsNotes blog writes:
"Lately, corresponding with the escalation in horror, mainstream media has grown more liberal about depicting corpses. So, what exactly is so distinctive about this picture? It's how profoundly mundane it happens to be."
Shaw then poses a question:
"What does it take for a police force to transport bodies around in an open flat bed without blankets or even a tarp, the way someone might cart pieces of lumber or plumbing supplies?"
In response, he postulates:
"It involves three things: an unremitting state of shock; a numbing level of depersonalization (probably why the photographer reveals no face -- living or dead); and almost unendurable subjection to the routine."
What Shaw is getting at here is part of the pathology of war – complete with the sorts of visuals that come with the course of a protracted conflict. We have seen other wars visualized in much the same way. First there is restraint not to offend – we see pictures of troops preparing for combat, lines of refugees, and are inundated with images of the latest technologies of modern warfare. Our minds become primed for the inevitability that death is soon to follow. And we wait.
This is the pathology of war and pathology of a culture that has normalized violence through repeated representations of pain and suffering.
We have seen the Abu Ghraib prison pictures and beheading of Westerners by Islamic militants, we know what violence looks like in Iraq.
We know that it will take a lot at this point to shock us further. Hauling mutilated human beings around in the back of a pickup in broad daylight serves to confirm the conviction that this is no longer on the surface simply a U.S. – Iraqi war – this is a sectarian conflict in a visually secular world.
Ashamedly, I feel little emotion in the image of this convoy of death and despair. I feel that the picture was actually meant to be somehow innocuous or harmless in its effect. As Sontag contends in her book "Regarding the Pain of Others", "Violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing."
For Sontag, "The familiarity of certain photographs builds our sense of the present and immediate past. Photographs lay down routes of reference, and serve as totems of causes….photographs help construct – and revise – our sense of a more distant past..."
There is another, very different type of image to hold up against Raouf's convoy of death picture. The picture I have in mind is by the preeminent photojournalist, David Burnett, who made an image in Chile during the roundup of students who were taken to a soccer stadium by soldiers following the coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. The picture shows young man looking blankly into Burnett lens. He is framed by the rifle barrels of the soldiers guarding him. Fear is written in the student's eyes. The man is talking to the camera – "God help us" – his eyes plead. The image is stunningly compassionate. But, as Sontag reminds us, "compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers."
For three decades Burnett's picture has haunted me, and I am drawn to ask what became of this young man on that dreadful day?
Why am I stirred by Burnett's image and feel only callousness for Rauof's? We must dig deeper into how we are socially and culturally conditioned to view images of violence. Sontag argues, "Photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus."
Is there a consensus today concluding that the continued violence in Iraq will only lead to more violence?
Can we expect to see more truckloads of battered bodies from Iraq?
Why are images of the dead so unreal and images of the living so real for me?
Perhaps John Berger explains it best when he suggests that picturing humans as victims of injustice and brutality is ""discontinuous with all other moments." Our inability to grasp the full extent of the suffering of others in any context inhibits our capacity for pity and compassion.
Susie Linfied, in an essay called, "Memuna, Almost Smiling: Looking at a Photograph of Suffering" summarizes the concerns of both Berger and Sontag when she writes:
"Because photographs lack narratives, they lack meaning-especially political and moral meaning, which is contingent on causation. Therefore, these critics claim, photographs of suffering-by freezing a moment of time, by extracting experience from context, by separating the event from its history-actually depoliticize, desensitize, and perhaps even dehumanize us, though their makers surely strive for the opposite."
When "Violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing", as Sontag claims, why is it that I am not moved to tears by the images of the dead and the dying coming from Iraq these days? I am alone in feeling desensitized to images of violence and destruction on our culture?
Perhaps, because in Raouf's image, along with many others made during the Iraqi conflict, I do not get the sense the compassion of the photographer behind the lens. Often at great risk, these photographers make pictures in attempt to edify and explain, but in return only serve to distance us further from the harsh realities of war.
Beyond the subjectivity of reading representations of violence in the media there is also a deeper and more troubling aspect of the visual at war that must be attended to. In every U.S. foreign conflict for the past half century, the camera has played a significant role in shaping public opinion for or against the war. As this current war has unfolded we have seen mostly what the government has wanted us to see, with the exception of the prisoner abuse photos and the pictures of flag-draped coffins.
Wendy Kozol, in her 2004 article "Domesticating NATO's War in Kosovo/a" suggest that "When critically examining news coverage of war, we need to confront the often compelling arguments made about the political imperative of visibility."
Is there some sort of political imperative lurking behind images showing the alarming number of civilian deaths in Iraq since last year's elections?
How could pictures of sectarian reprisal killings and other acts of violence signify a shift in the way the media has covered this war?
May 13, 2006 in Current Affairs, Dennis Dunleavy, images of violence, Iraq, Iraq War, Media Criticism, Michael Shaw, photography, Photojournalism, photojournalism education, point and shoot cameras, President Bush, prisoner abuse, semiotics, Susan Sontag, visual journalism education, Visual Rhetoric and Metaphor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Journalist Jill Carroll is Free
"After being held hostage for nearly three months, Jill Carroll is free."
--CS Monitor
This morning the Christian Science Monitor confirmed reports that freelance journalist Jill Carroll has been released by her captors in Iraq. Carroll has been the focus of an international campaign to secure her freedom from militants since her abduction on January 7.
According to the Monitor, "Responding to the news of Carroll's release, Monitor editor Richard Bergenheim said, "this is an exciting day, we couldn't be happier. We are so pleased she'll be back with her family. The prayers of people all over the world have been answered."
For more coverage of Carroll's release go to the Washington Post's article here.
March 30, 2006 in blogjill, Current Affairs, Iraq, Iraq War, jillblog, jillcarroll, Journalism, journalist deaths, Media Ethics, teaching | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Signs of War
According to the The New York Times the image above is a
sign posted at Camp Nama in Iraq where some "detainees were used as paintball targets."
Beyond the political and human rights issues associated with such a message, I find myself haunted by the possible significations found in the relationship between the words and the abstract forms used in the sign.
The phrase "no blood, no foul" is commonly heard on basketball courts. Now there is a new context to consider.
Drawing on visual semiotics as a theory for decoding how images convey meaning there are some interesting visual cues at work here. In my mind, there is a strong gestalt between the words and the figures.
There is the simplicity of the visual construction here -- the effective use of negative space and the relative distances of the words sliding up and down the sides of the triangle -- that seem to suggest a high level of formal and declarative order.
According to New York Times writers by Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, the sign is part of a larger message at Task Force 6-26's top-secret detention facility.
"Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: 'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it.'"
What are the iconic, indexical, and symbolic levels of meaning conveyed by such visual messages? Do such messages index or point toward the normalization of attitudes dealing with the treatment of prisoners in Iraq? In other words, does a sign like this foment the abuse of prisoners by establishing and maintaining what appears to me to an increasingly game-like culture of combat associated with military actions?
It is this last question that intrigues me most here. The transference of first person shooter computer games to military action -- in combat and in play seems to be in evidence here. Paintball moves the virtual reality of the computer shooter games into the real world. By extension, there appears to be a connection between fantasy games and warfare.
A simple analysis of the geometry of the dominant figures in the frame -- the circle within a black triangle -- suggest a sort of reciprocity. Maybe I am over-reaching a bit, but reciprocity from a social psychological perspective refers to in-kind negative and positive responses.
In social psychology, reciprocity refers to in-kind positive or negative responses of individuals towards the actions of others. Thus positively interpreted actions elicit positive responses and vice versa.... Reciprocal actions are important to social psychology as they can help explain the maintenance of social norms. If a sufficient proportion of the population interprets the breaking a social norm by another as a hostile action and if these people are willing to take (potentially costly) action to punish the rule-breaker then this can maintain the norm in the absence of formal sanctions.
In this case, I am visually interpreting the geometric forms of the circle within the black triangular field as constituting a reciprocal relationship -- one establishing and maintaining a social norm endemic in a "barracks culture." A denotative or literal reading may lead a viewer to see the circle as a paintball. However, deeper readings may produce more subtle deeply psychological connotative interpretations.
March 22, 2006 in Dennis Dunleavy, Design, First Person Shooter games, Iraq, Iraq War, Media Criticism, prisoner abuse, propaganda, semiotics, teaching, visual journalism education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Bloggers Rally to Support the Release of Independent Journalist Jill Carroll
Her name maybe not be the subject of banter around the dinner table, but she has not been forgotten. Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped in Iraq on Jan. 7.
While the world waits, mostly in silence, for news of her fate, the campaign to secure her freedom continues.
The Commitee to Protect Bloggers has begun a campaign to circulate a video produced by the Christian Science Monitor asking the Arab world to help free Jill Carroll. The campaign is aksing bloggers to post the link to the video so that it can be circulated as widely as possible.
Why should we care what happens to Jill Carroll?
Carroll is not some bit player in this drama called Operation Iraqi Freedom? Carroll's abduction, and Daniel Pearl's before her, signifies the dangers of war for people dedicated to reporting the truth as best they can report it. Journalists who venture into the dark times of war understand the risks they take. Why do they do it? For the fame, for the money? Most are either famous or rich, but they continue to go so that we can see the world, in all its horror and glory, through their eyes.
Carroll's fate lies in the hands of individuals who are blinded by a singular hatred of all-things Western. Carroll is not being held against her will because she is Jill Carroll, she is being held because in the eyes of her captors she represents the West in its war against Iraq and Islam.
Carroll and other journalists are easy targets in places like Iraq. They don't carry guns, just cameras and notepads. They place themselves in harm's way so that others can see the harm we are doing to ourselves and others. Anything bloggers can do to keep Carroll's kidknapping in the spotlight is a small victory for humanity.
March 14, 2006 in blogjill, censorship, Current Affairs, First Amendment, Iraq, Iraq War, jillblog, jillcarroll, Journalism, journalist deaths, Media Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)