September 28, 2007
The first caught the Gathering of Eagles using a photo illustration--a photoshopped image, in this instance--that showed Code Pink supporters carrying a banner that proclaimed, "We support the murder of American troops."
The problem is, Code Pink didn't make this particular banner... these guys did, or at least they created the image.
To be fair, the Gathering of Eagles were not the first nor the last to be taken in by this "fake, but accurate" image that does capture what many conservative feel are the real sentiments of some radical left wing groups, and the sign isn't that far off the mark from very real signs that have been carried by "progressive" protesters in the past.
Yesterday, Sadly, No! once again caught a fake photo being used to support a protest, this time, capturing FrontPageMag using an image from an obscure 30-minute Dutch indie film in promoting Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
This is a little more difficult to blame on the magazine (dubious as their credibility often is), as reputable news organizations and human rights groups have used the exact same image in the past, building up credibility for it as a legitimate photo, when in actuality it was not.
All the snark at Sadly No! aside, in an age where image sources can sometimes be questionable and even relying on other media outlets can leave a blogger, magazine, newspaper, etc posting an image that is either staged, altered, misappropriated or mis-captioned, what is the best way to address the issue of correcting such misinformation?
How it Should Be Done (One Blogger's Opinion)
It seems that in many instances where a publisher gets taken in by bogus or mis-captioned images such as these, that the immediate reaction is defensiveness, which is human nature. We, as humans, hate to be wrong, and it makes things worse when the credibility of the image/caption in question is typically brought about by a less-than-polite critic.
That said, it is wrong to ignore the issue and act as if the image is unquestionably accurate when it's credibility has been credibly challenged, and also wrong to simply remove it and act as if it was never there.
On July, 13, 2007, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty ran the exact same image stoning image from the Dutch film, with the caption, "An Iranian woman is buried up to her chest before being stoned to death, though to have taken place some 20 years ago (file photo) (public domain)"
Ideally, in an instance such as this, the inaccurate caption could be corrected by something like this:
A dramatic depiction of a stoning from the 1994 Dutch film, De Steen. The photo was previously incorrectly identified as a photo from an actual stoning in Iran roughly 20 years ago.
Corrections don't have to be that hard.
In this particular instance, however, the problem is compounded for this news organization, because the same photo had been used by RFE/RL in other stories as well.
In situations where a photo has become stock, and used multiple times, it is probably worth correcting both the captions, and creating a separate article explaining how the error occurred, and what steps will be taken to make sure such things do not occur in the future.
I have some sympathy for the various news outlets who were using this photo as the actual depiction of a real event. The actual source of the photo (filmmaker Mahnaz Tamizi) is probably unaware of the picture's by news outlets, and once a photo is used by one or more credible news outlets or organizations, it can readily become part of the "conventional wisdom."
That said, there are right ways and wrong ways to address corrections, and tossing the photo and caption "down the memory hole" and acting as if they never existed as FrontPageMag has done, is an entirely unacceptable rewriting of history.
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September 27, 2007
Via one of those neocon warmongers at Hot Air. Get more Uncle Jay Explains, here.
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Somehow his story is starting to sound strangely familiar:
Early on, McSwane did a piece about cocaine dealing in Fort Collins, based on anonymous sources, Lowrey said. Lowrey said he decided to kill the article when McSwane declined to reveal the sources to him.Also troubling to other students was McSwane's story of growing up in a foster home.
"So he has this heartbreaking story," Lowrey said. But students learned that the foster mother in the home was Hansen, McSwane's natural mother.
"I raised him, and yes, I'm a foster mother," Hansen said. "He was never, ever a foster child."
McSwane's editor, Brandon Lowrey, attempted to fact-check McSwane's cocaine story, and refused to run it when McSwane didn't provide evidence to support the claims.
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September 25, 2007
Civil war has been averted in Iraq and Iranian intervention there has "ceased to exist," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday."I can't say there is a picture of roses and flowers in Iraq," Maliki told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "However, I can say that the greatest victory, of which I am proud . . . is stopping the explosion of a sectarian war." That possibility, he said, "is now far away."
While political reconciliation is not yet complete, he said, progress is being made. "Reconciliation is not a decision that can be made, but a process that takes continuous efforts and also needs strategic patience," Maliki said.
He said cabinet ministers who have left his government in protest will be replaced, and he expressed confidence that the Iraqi parliament will pass legislation that he, the Bush administration and Congress have demanded.
Maliki, who will speak to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, deftly dodged questions about last week's incident in which employees of Blackwater, a private U.S. security firm, allegedly killed 11 Iraqi civilians. While "initial signs" are that "there was some wrongdoing from Blackwater," he said, he will await the results of a U.S.-Iraqi investigation. He dismissed a statement by the interior minister in Baghdad that Blackwater will be banned from Iraq, saying the positions of the ministry and his office are "the same."
Iraqi security forces, Maliki said, are increasingly capable of operating without U.S. support. But he agreed with the Bush administration that an early U.S. withdrawal would be unwise.
Iraq's political leadership, he said through an interpreter, "wants the process of withdrawing troops to happen [simultaneously with] the process of rebuilding Iraqi Security Forces so that they can take responsibility." No one, he said, "wants to risk losing all the achievements" they have made.
Whether or not you agree with al-Maliki's assessment (and there is plenty of room to doubt his pronouncements from both the right and the left), you would think that the Iraqi Prime Minister's statements that the threat of a full-on sectarian war " had ceased to exist" along with Iran's involvement in meddling in Iraq, would be page A1 material.
After all, American politics, foreign and domestic, are being driven by the actions and reactions of Democratic and Republican politicians to news in Iraq.
You might think that a strong claim of positive news--and there is no way to say this is anything other than that sort of claim--would be wildly trumpeted by the Post, if for no other reason than to generate ad revenue and hits that would come from such a controversial claim.
The current WashingtonPost.com home page instead features what leading stories?
Sanctions against a country the newspaper had to rename because most readers would not know what it was otherwise, the announcement that the Supreme Court would examine a death penalty case, and that the UAW hopes for a quick resolution to the strike they called for.
Claiming that the sectarian war in Iraq has "ceased to exist?"
Page A15.
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September 24, 2007
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a member of the Islamic State of Iraq. You wear no uniform, no insignia that identifies you as anything other than a civilian. Late to a meeting with cell members at a nearby safehouse, you step off the main road to take a shortcut down a path through a grove of trees. Before you, on the path, is a spool of wire often used by your fellow insurgents in building IEDs. Seeing no one around, and wondering if one of your fellow cell members may have use for it, you warily pick it up with the intention of giving it to you cell's bomb builder...
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a U.S. Army sniper in a concealed position a hundred meters away, watching these scenarios play out. Can you cipher their intentions and determine which man is the insurgent, and which is the civilian, based merely upon the decision to pick up the spool of wire?
If a Washington Post story this morning is correct, that is precisely the determination that an elite sniper platoon was asked to make as part of a classified baiting program hoping to identify and eliminate insurgents in one area of Iraq.
"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.
"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.
In a country where every household is expected to have small arms for protection, using bait such as small arms, magazines, or ammunition for these small arms would be entirely and unquestioningly unacceptable. It would be far too tempting for civilians to pick up such found implements that they could legally own, use, or sell.
On the other hand, if the unit was using bait items that could only be use by insurgents and terrorists--say, artillery rounds or plastic explosives--then the baiting becomes more targeted and less likely to ensnare innocent civilians. But when the penalty for picking up such objects and attempting to carry them away is a marksmanÂ’s bullet, is it acceptable to take that gamble?
The story reported by Josh White and Joshua Partlow, unfortunately, immediately begins to purposefully conflate unlike things almost immediately after raising very legitimate questions about the baiting program.
Citing two soldiers who only revealed the program in revenge for pending disciplinary actions is problematic, as is conflating murder charges pending against soldiers for planting evidence after a shooting took place with the program of leaving bait to hopefully identify insurgents worth shooting.
It is one thing to shoot someone because they are holding a hand grenade as the approach your position, but quite another to shoot someone coming down the same path and then plant the grenade on their body after the fact. White and Partlow spend the majority of their article blurring the distinctions between the two, while admitting begrudgingly in one sentence on the second page of the article:
Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.
The reporters present the defense team arguments of murder suspects as their "evidence" of a failed program, but it is nothing of the sort.
The men they speak with are on trial for planting weapons on men they've killed, after the fact, to justify a killing that they felt was questionable under their rules of engagement. The baiting program, while a legitimate topic for vigorous debate and legal review in itÂ’s own right, has nothing to do with planting evidence at all.
The "throwaway" gun is a staple of television shows and films going back decades based upon the dishonorable practice of a very few real-life law enforcement officers who planted guns on the bodies of criminals to justify a "bad" or questionable shooting. That this practice also occurs in war zones is unsurprising, if regrettable.
That White and Partlow would be so gullible as to immediately and uncritically swallow defense team arguments that the program is to blame for the alleged criminal acts of their clients planting evidence to justify a shooting is an unconscionable act of criminal advocacy to advance apparent personal biases against a program only tangentially related, if newsworthy in its own right. Put another way, they donÂ’t like the program, and are willing to use the club provided for them by the defense team, without any critical eye towards the merits of the defense, which are few.
The illegitimate sniping in this case clearly doesn't stop with the soldiers, and we deserve better from our professional journalists than this.
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September 23, 2007
It is perhaps ironic that I never got fired up as much about this story as have some others (I only touched on it again here to note my surprise, and here to note the Times first explanation).
Reading Hoyt's explanation, my primary thought is relief that this was an apparent mistake (and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here considering their eventual transparency on this issue), and hope that they'll be forgiving of the Times advertising person that sold the ad below market rate.
I can't quite bring myself to be as forgiving of Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, or of the self-serving argument of publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger, that "If weÂ’re going to err, itÂ’s better to err on the side of more political dialogue. ... Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people."
Somehow, that argument seems quite hollow coming from a man who in a previous war, hoped that American soldiers would get shot because "It's the other guy's country." (h/t Ed Driscoll)
The saying goes that "a fish rots from the head," so if anyone gets taken to task over this at the Times, I hope that the senior leadership at the times looks squarely in the mirror.
The cost would not have been a factor if the executives of the Times had followed their own polices, and declined to run the ad in the first place.
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September 21, 2007
Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers has sued God, (who has since responded?). The file AP photo (and there appears to be only one) has a rather interesting composition, don't it?
I guess I should be glad that he's an icon to somebody, but to me, the imagery blows cold.
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September 14, 2007
MoveOn told ABC's Jake Tapper that the group paid $65,000 for a Sept. 10 ad accusing General David Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House" in his status reports on Iraq. The Times rate card implies that weekday, full-page, black-and-white cause, appeal or political ads cost $181,692.A post on the blog Confederate Yankee soon noted the disparity. "While I'm fairly certain that nobody pays 'sticker' prices, 61% off seems a rather sweet deal," his post said. The New York Post picked up the story yesterday, running a piece headlined "Times Gives Lefties a Hefty Discount for 'Betray Us' Ad" and followed up with another article and an editorial today. "Citing the shared liberal bias of the group and the Times," the Post wrote, "one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the 'family discount.'"
Mr. Giuliani, speaking in Atlanta yesterday, demanded that the Times apologize and offer him the same price.
Standby basis
But MoveOn bought its ad on a "standby" basis, under which it can ask for a day and placement in the paper but doesn't get any guarantees. Standby pricing doesn't appear on the Times rate card -- but that kind of ad at a standby rate turns out to run about $65,000.
In other words, all the attention came as a result of the New York Times not putting their standby pricing on their rate cards, and the majority of the angry pixels expended in this incident were more than likely "much ado about nothing."
An interesting take on the eventual non-event from Dan Riehl:
I won't pretend that Print isn't significant when it comes to the news game today, that would be foolish. But I would add an additional point, or two. Being the topic of the news agenda is a far different thing than setting said agenda. And if it weren't for New Media, particularly blogs in this case, this particular agenda item would likely have never even been set. Duh!
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September 10, 2007
I'd like to know if advertising rates of the New York Times are determined by the political message taking up the ad space, and whether or not a discrepancy in such rates, if one exists, is something that they owe it to their readers to disclose.
Update: According to Jake Tapper at ABCNews, the ad cost MoveOn.org approximately $65,000, running in the "A" section of the paper.
And while I don't claim to understand the intricacies of New York Times advertising sales, their own rate card (PDF) seems rather specific that Advocacy ads, which the MoveOn.org ad most clearly was, are sold at $167,157 for a full-page, full-price nationwide ad.
If Tapper's numbers are correct, MoveOn.org paid just 38.89% of a full-cost, nationwide ad, or a 61.11% discount off of a full-rate ad. While I'm fairly certain that nobody pays "sticker" prices, 61% off seems a rather sweet deal.
Note: For those who can, I'd appreciate it.
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September 04, 2007
Bryan has a contact that works at the plant, and states it was not attacked when UPI ran the article, that they were not damaged nearly as bad as UPI states, and was only attacked two days later.
Per Bryan's request, I contacted the Army PAO in that sector, and found out that there was indeed an attack that day, on a power substation in that sector:
The attack on the substation definitely happened, as did the attack on the fire truck. I just saw photos of the burned out building and fire engine.But, it is a small facility, and the article exaggerates the impact of the attack. Did people lose power as a result? Probably- those serviced in that immediate neighborhood. But, power is intermittent throughout Doura, so to insinuate that the loss of this station is the cause of a city-wide loss of electricity isn't exactly accurate either. It sounds like another example of one smaller event happening, but then being made into more than it actually was.
The main Doura power plant is still operating per normal output.
There is a huge difference, of course, between substations, which are small relay stations commonly found distributing power to adjoining residential and commercial districts here in the United States as elsewhere in the world, and power stations, where coal, other fuels, or nuclear power is used to generate energy in a much, much larger facility.
Details, details.
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You could start with President Bush's al Asad photo-op yesterday, where the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Ambassador Crocker, and Commanding General Petraeus met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Presidnet Talabani, and Vice Presidents Medhi and al Hashemi. Critics point out that the meeting was a merely a six-hour stop and photo-op for the President, and as such, was a public relations stunt. That the brief visit was designed as a public relations tool is beyond doubt. The undeniable fact remains that al Anbar, a province deemed all but lost according to classified Marine Corps Intelligence reports leaked to the press just a year ago, has now become so quiet that our leaders and the leaders of Iraq knew that the base was safe enough for a public meeting, without any apparent fear of a rocket or mortar attack by insurgents, or of suicide attacks by terrorists, or of anti-aircraft missiles being fired at the two large jets bringing in the American delegation, or the helicopters that (I presume) brought in the Iraqi senior leadership.
In addition to this public meeting of leaders in an area once deemed lost just a short time ago, U.S. casualties in Iraq have dropped in half at a time they were expected to actually rise, al Qaeda-aligned terrorists and insurgent groups have either turned, or become hounded and hunted in al Anbar, Diyala, and elsewhere. Some supporters are suggesting that what future history may regard as the turning point towards victory is either occurring, or may have already occurred.
For war detractors in our political classes, in the media and on the activist left, the war was lost long ago, and every day merely means another American mother will lose her soldier-child in a lost cause. To them, the war possibility of a turn-around in Iraq is unthinkable, any apparent progress is an illusion, or merely a matter of temporary gains before an inevitable fall.
Both sides are looking to make what they can of the much-anticipated "Petraeus Report" (which, as
Those on the right will take the local and regional gains made in al Anbar and Diyala and other areas of the country as signs of success, and corners possibility turned. Those on the left will note what is essentially a British surrender to Shia militias in Basra, the decidedly mixed security results in Baghdad itself, the continuing meddling of Iran, and what is largely a failure of the central Iraqi government to make significant progress towards reconciliation as signs of inevitable failure. As in any on-going conflict, both sides have plenty of ammunition to continue supporting their pre-conceived opinions, and they have a right to share those opinions.
What I would prefer not to see, however, is the continuation of a disturbing trend by some in the media and blogosphere towards unfairly mischaracterizing and in some cases blatantly attacking the credibility of our military, in most cases without just cause.
The techniques used to attack the credibility of the military vary widely.
Some come from minor, conspiracy-minded fringe players and are easily brushed aside with a laugh, but others, provided with a more legitimizing platform in a national news outlet, are more troubling.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald is one example, as he blatantly lied back in June as he accused of military public affairs system of deception when he stated:
A simple look at the actual press releases from the PAO system immediately and conclusively debunked Greenwald's claim, but it has not stopped him, nor other critics, from attacking the credibility of the military, even as they studiously avoid almost every sympathetic media misstep.
The New Republic ran a series of brutal fantasies concocted by a U.S. Army private as real without any attempt to fact check them, instigated a cover-up that purposefully concealed the identity of sources that they said supported the story, arguably deceived these same sources, and hid countering testimony collected from other experts, only to blame the military for stone-walling their investigation. In fact, the author of this fiction has the ability to answer media requests, and instead has thus far chosen not to take them.
But minor media and bloggers aren't the only ones attacking our troops.
Hollywood directors are releasing the first of a seriesanti-war films, and the vangard of this effort, Redacted, redacts reality to push an anti-soldier, anti-war political agenda.
The leader of the United States Senate declared that the "surge" was lost before it even began, and declared in April that he would not believe any future news provided by General Petraeus that contradicted that, essentially assaulting General Petraeus' integrity. Later, John Murtha lied while claiming that the White House was using General Petraeus as a political prop, and criticized Petraeus for not meeting with Congress. Not only had General Petraeus met with Congress, he actually took time out of his schedule to brief Murtha and Pelosi privately.
Both sides, right and left, have their own political agendas. Sympathizers in the blogosphere and in media organizations large and small bring their own biases to the table as they discuss war policy. That is understood, expected, and perfectly understandable.
What is not understandable is why critics feel it is necessary to attack the troops as they attack the mission. They claim to be able to support the troops while critcizing the mission, but in practice, that is often not the case.
When General Petreaus comes back to the United States to brief the President and Congress, he will not do so as a partisan. He promises that, “The Ambassador and I are going to give it to them straight and then allow the folks at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue make what clearly is a national decision.“
He will speak for the American military, as the Commanding General of our forces in Iraq. He will not speak as a Republican General, or a Democratic General, but as a General of the Army of the United States of America. He will provide the facts, and let us discuss, decipher, and no doubt, spin what he reports.
Fine. Let us spin the data and the findings to support our political viewpoints.
But please, let's do so without attacking the integrity of those who serve, which is a tactic becoming more common, and repulsive, as time goes by.
Update:: corrected Matthew Sheffield's name in the text above.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."
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