In a damnng commentary, Jules Crittenden, an editor at the Boston Herald, says news photos coming out of Lebanon can’t be considered reliable anymore:
Rank or perhaps willful ignorance of the realities of warfare is also demonstrated by photos such as a car allegedly hit by an Israeli airstrike that looks like it’s been in a bad fender bender, with no sign of the kind of blast damage a car hit by a missile or bomb would have sustained. You’d think after handling three years of war photos out of Iraq, not to mention the many wars of preceding decades, photo editors might be more conversant with the particulars of the subject.
The question is, why would photo editors who presumeably are looking at a chronological series of photos from any given scene, fall for tricks that have been uncovered by amateurs?
Because people see what they want to see. Magicians and scammers have known this since the time of the pharoahs. Psychological studies have confirmed it is true.
In Lebanon, where Hezbollah has made widespread use of human shields, firing missiles on Israel from positions dug in next to UN observer posts and within inhabited villages, what the international press has wanted to see and has reported is evidence of Israeli war crimes. Until now, Hezbollah and photographers like Hajj have been able to ensure that they will.
Everyone in the news business gets taken for a ride sooner or later. It’s an occupational hazard. What is surprising is the scale of it in Lebanon. And what is tragic about this is, as a Boston Herald photo editor noted, editors everywhere can no longer trust the pictures from Lebanon. The public cannot know what is staged and what is real. They cannot know the true scope of the devastation that Hezbollah’s aggression against Israel and its cynical tactics have brought on the Lebanese people. The con artists have shafted themselves and their own people with their cheap tricks.
Read the full commentary.
