Who You Gonna Believe -- Me, Or Your Lyin' Eyes?

That's another saying we've heard journalists use recently, meant to remind everyone that you just can't spin your way past visual evidence.

What it ignores, of course, is that visual evidence is often not what it seems, and often far more complicated than it's represented to be.

Tonight CBS's new glamour girl, Lara Logan, has a piece centered around (well, actually, exclusively composed of) their exclusive acquisition of combat footage from Ramadi, in Anbar province. The footage is from mid-November, and we're told it's from a date when Congressman Murtha was in Iraq (although whether he was in Ramadi, or ever aware of this particular engagement is left ambiguous.) What we aren't told orally (I don't think, I was writing pretty furiously at the time) but what is quickly flashed on the screen is that the source of the footage is Time magazine's Michael Ware.

This is interesting for all kinds of reasons. Why was a print journalist taking video? And why did it end up with CBS, and not with the other news network of the Time-Warner empire, CNN? And then, of course, there's Ware himself.

But the other reason the story was of interest to me is that it seemed to me that the introduction to the piece (again, ambiguous) was a reference to the bold action taken by insurgents on the streets of Ramadi today. What makes this particularly ironic is that the story on CBS's web site regarding Ramadi is already updated to account for DOD claims (as reported on Fox, but not on their web site that I can see) that the footage available earlier in the day of insurgents brazenly walking about the city streets, and the reports that went with it that they had successfully attacked government buildings, appear now to have been a hoax.

That footage was made available from AP, however, as the CBS (with AP) story notes:

A U.S. Marine spokesman in Ramadi said reports of insurgents taking control of Ramadi are completely unsubstantiated and only a few small arms engagements occurred Thursday, reports CBS News correspondent Cami McCormick.

But an AP Television News video showed the insurgents walking down a shuttered market street and a residential neighborhood, as well as firing four mortar rounds. The masked men, however, looked relaxed and did not engage in any battles, and no U.S. bases or government buildings were shown. (The emphasis is CBS's.)

MS was reporting using the bad footage earlier. I wonder if they've corrected the reports on air.

In fact all sorts of outlets were reporting the insurgents success today. Will they all update their readers? (With the same degree of emphasis as the original story was given?)

And what is AP saying about this?

Ironically, if you go to AP's home page and click on "Iraq" for latest stories, you find this, but nothing about APTV having possibly passed off a hoax to their subscribers.

Interesting, no? Whether or not paying for the placement of accurate stories should be a scandal, two things are true: first, it is now a scandal, and no one is questioning the stories' accuracy. Here we have a situation where one of the two wire services that all six American news networks rely on overwhelmingly for their footage, and therefore for their reporting (television being, indeed, a visual medium) and therefore one of the primary sources shaping the perception of the American people of the war in Iraq may well have just passed on a hoax, and not just any hoax but an enemy information operation.

We fully expect front page screaming headlines, demands for hearings and investigations, and at the very least, outraged statements from all AP's subscribers that they have to be able to trust AP's product, which means they have to be able to trust AP's sources. (Uh, that was sarcasm.)

The whole reason AP can produce footage when the networks can't, of course, is that AP is using Iraqi stringers who are free to leave the Green Zone and travel the country.

If AP just passed on footage of this nature, it surely raises serious questions about just who the hell AP is hiring -- and therefore about just what their vetting procedures are, does it not?

If I were an American network executive, whether I had used this footage or not, I would be screaming blue bloody murder. Remember, the networks are passing off the wire services' footage off, each night, as their own. If they used footage that turns out to be a terrorist hoax they have just been tremendously embarrassed (if only because their only excuse will be to admit they were using someone else's material and passing it off to viewers as theirs without explicitly marking the provenance of the material.) If they didn't, well they certaining dodged a bullet, didn't they?

We shall see how (if) this is remarked upon tomorrow, but I'm betting it vanishes without a trace.

Update: Reuters has the same report. With AP already hedging, I'd love to know what Reuters will be saying tomorrow. Note that they source some of the most spectacular claims to "a reporter for Reuters there," which no doubt means an Iraqi stringer. We know that some of the Iraqi employees don't want their names released for security reasons, and that's understandable, but it's a desire that is in tension with the news audience's need to know just who the damn source is for their news, and how credible (and well trained) that person is. If a news outfit doesn't want to release the name of its employee for legitimate security reasons then, just as when using anonymous sources, they need to offer a description, and a reason why a name is not being provided. So, for example, "a reporter for Reuters, an Iraqi national whose name is being withheld for security reasons," would work. (And even that's spotting them some points since it doesn't make explicit that the person is a stringer, not regular staff.)

Update: Hoax, schmoax, on tonight's CBS News as part of a rapid fire report clearly meant to suggest thing were going to hell in a handbasket (but this happened, and this happened, and this happened) a different reporter referred again to yesterday's events in Ramadi, noting that insurgents even went so far as to release video to show how in control they were -- and showing a few seconds of the contested video yet again. (By the way, since the Post has made clear in their reporting today that this was Zarqawi's group, the use of the term "insurgents" is somewhat misleading.) The reporter (I believe Kimberly Dozier, but I'm not positive) did point out that the Americans "dismiss" this "as propaganda."

Sorry, but that doesn't get it. It doesn't make clear whether they dismissed their filming themselves and distributing the video as propaganda, or the claim as propaganda, and in either event the single tepid sentence can never, in a television report, stand up to the apparent strength of the visual evidence. That's my point. You can't show footage, then merely say, the Americans aren't buying -- without explaining what underlies that -- and claim the report is balanced. The visual will always trump, or appear to trump, the textual, unless you do substantial explanatory work.

CBS's performance here is particularly disturbing because they don't seem at all disturbed by the fact that they're using footage that the American military has stated is part of a terrorist information operation. Once that claim has been made, how dare they use it without providing their audience with far more contextual background than has been offered here? That requirement would seem to be all the stronger given that they seem to suggest that the source of the footage is not AP, but the terrorists themselves (or perhaps that was AP's original source?)

Yet they seem perfectly happy, and perfectly certain that their obligation to their audience has been fulfilled, once they provide the disclaimer, "oh, yeah, the Americans say this footage we're using right here is propaganda. Can't say what that's all about. Moving right along here . . ."

Yes, the footage made up only seconds of the report. But for those few seconds, terrorists were shown comfortable and relaxed allegedly on the streets of a city in Iraq, during a heated debate over how the war is going.

If this a terrorist information op, so far I'd say it's a God damned successful one.

Comments

[R Rainey]

Their timing is impeccable, coming just as Bush is getting a bounce from a good speech. You'd almost think it was planned.

[crosspatch]

This continued blatent, obvious, and seemingly intentional negative spin on everything coming from Iraq is very disappointing. There was a time when I had some respect for AP's news reports. Respect has now been replaced by suspicion. AP's reports from Iraq aren't worth a pinch of owl scat these days. I have to seriously wonder how they keep getting away with it.

That other media outlets would be using AP content is nothing new, they have been doing that for years. The difference is the quality of the content these days. The Chinese wire service is putting out better quality reporting these days than AP is.

But as you point out, it isn't just AP. There seems to be some kind of collusion going on here between the media outlets to avoid publishing good news, spread bad news as quickly as possible and worry about verification later. Our news media sucks as far as integrity.

[Capt Jeff Pool]

You are spot on in your analysis of the media hoax in Ramadi. As the public affairs officer here in Iraq for the Marines, I was unsuccessful in trying to stop their misreporting. Once the wires picked up the story, everyone started running it.

[Tom W.]

What good is a free press if all it gives you is lies?

If the press is willfully using enemy propaganda and passing it off as factual, doesn't that make the press the enemy?

How much worse could a government-run press be than the mainstream media?

[Yehudit]

"CBS's performance here is particularly disturbing because they don't seem at all disturbed by the fact that they're using footage that the American military has stated is part of a terrorist information operation."

Why should they? They weren't disturbed at promoting fake documents to influence a domestic election. They probably think this footage is also "fake but accurate."

[Shane]

I wonder if we looked around long enough at old Iraq video, if we wouldn't find that this footage is a couple of years old and just recycled?

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下半身 ダイエット

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視力回復 トレーニング
視力回復 トレーニング
視力回復 トレーニング
視力回復 方法