Don’t believe everything they tell you. Fact check everything. The most important lesson of Journalism 101 is an adage familiar to all reporters:
If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
Do news photographers learn the same lesson? Or do they believe everything they’re told — mom’s love, and all?
Which brings us to AP.
Young people stand in silent protest in front of the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 in an international protest against the imprisonment of 37 Palestinian women in Israeli prisons for political reasons. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Neither Sokolowski, nor any of the AP higher-ups, bothered to verify — as IsraellyCool did — that the woman on the featured placard, Sana Muhammad Hussein Shehada – is serving 3 life sentences in prison for transporting a suicide bomber to Jerusalem.
The March, 2002 attack Shehada assisted killed three people and injured some 40 more.
Shehada no political prisoner. She’s an accomplice to murder.
The protesters’ ignorance doesn’t surprise me. For that matter, neither does AP’s.
