A Picture Worth A Thousand Words
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2008-05-08 15:33. Media
Newspaper Criticized For Publishing Photo
By Helen Thomas, Hearst White House columnist
“Hearst Newspapers” — — WASHINGTON — Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”
Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.
As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.
Click here to find out more!
Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent.
The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said about 20 readers complained about the photo, while a few readers praised the Post for publishing the stark picture on page one.
Some mothers said they were offended that their children might see the picture, though one wonders whether their youngsters watch television and play with violent videos in a pretend world.
From the start of the unprovoked U.S. “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, the government tried to bar the news media from photographing flag-draped coffins of American soldiers returning from Iraq. A Freedom of Information lawsuit forced the government to release pictures of returning coffins.
Howell said some readers felt the photo of the Iraqi boy was “an anti-war statement; some thought it was in poor taste.” Well, so is war.
Howell said her boss, Executive Editor Len Downie, “is cautious about such photos.”
(Source)
Children killed by American military activities = Evil. Play this up in the media.
Children killed by Iraqi/Iranian/Al Qaeda activities = Ambivalent. Ignore this in the media. Or in the case of print media, newspapers in particular, run it on a back page with no photo and only a brief article.
While working with my comrades at the DNC I remember an e-mail, a friend of mine carbon copied me on, where he suggested to a fellow traveler at The Washington Post that they ought to run this photo. A gajillion e-mails a day pass through my Outlook inbox so I thought nothing of it at the time and I certainly did not follow up on it. But they really ran that? Wow! This is superb propaganda, Mikael!!! Now I am annoyed with myself that I did not follow this since I had a glimpse at it’s genesis.
The Post took some heat over this? Not that they gave a damn! I work in Washington DC at one of the DNC offices. I did not hear of any uproar over The Post running this photo. But then again, I am so damn busy working with both Hillary’s and Obama’s campaigns during the Primaries season that I can see how I missed that amongst other things.
Now if The Post would run with ALL of our suggestions, what would the DNC need with a P.R. dept.??? Just joking!!!
Thanks for posting this, Mikael!!! Today was an awful day and this brightened my evening!!! 😀
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Well, well, well,….how profound!
“Mission Accomplished: Bush kills another future terrorist”
Are you absolutely sure? It is possible considering the insane and hateful indoctrination that tens of millions of Muslim children get during every day of their youth at their local madrassa but I seriously doubt that child was Bush’s or anybody else in the Armed Force’s intended target.
Blame it on Bush and feel superior and continue to delude yourselves.
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c355/Candor7/islam4kids.jpg
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/012507.php
This photo, and many others like it, should be on the front page of every local paper… every day.
The American public is too divorced from the realities of the policies we (collectively, voluntarily or otherwise) support. Is it any wonder that Bush forbids photographs of American dead and the compliant MSM adhere to that policy and extends it to anything that suggests our occupation of Iraq is, in any way, violent or that anyone our military kills, intentionally or otherwise, isn’t a “terrorist”.
It is this willingness to live in a “la-la land” divorced from the realities of science and the effects of our national policies that allows the American public to support governmental policies, the consequences of which, they only dimly – if at all – recognize.
The Busheviks learned the lessons of the media coverage of the Viet Nam War all too well.