An Iraqi child jumps over a line of remains in a school where bodies had been brought from a mass grave discovered in the desert in the outskirts of Al Musayyib, 50 km south of Baghdad, May 27, 2003 in Iraq. People had been searching for days for identity cards or other clues among the skeletons to try to find the remains of family members, including children, from the grave that locals say contained the remains of hundreds of Shi’ite Muslims executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime after their uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)
(The BBC is facing criticism after it accidentally used a picture taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the senseless massacre of children in Syria.)
Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.
Nine Years of War in Iraq
by shineyourlight
1/1/2012
http://shineyourlight-shineyourlight.blogspot.ca/2012/01/9-nike-years-of-war-in-iraq.html
After nearly nine years in Iraq, the final combat troops continue to arrive back in the U.S. The war that officially began eight years and nine months earlier cost nearly 4,500 American, well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The bitterly divisive conflict left Iraq shattered and struggling to recover. For the United States, two central questions remain unanswered: whether it was all worth it, and whether the new government the Americans leave behind will remain a steadfast U.S. ally or drift into Iran’s orbit. Here is a look back with some of the most memorable photographs of the war. (AP)
Houla horror: truth is elusive, lies are easier to spot
SydWalker.info
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2012/05/27/houla-horror-truth-is-elusive-lies-are-easier-to-spot/
Over the last 24-hours there’s been a renewed media storm over Syria – prompted by a horrific story of atrocities in the town of Houla. Very gruesome images of dead children have been offered to the media, which has lapped them up and used them again and again on our screens and in our newspapers.
The UN observers in Syria, so far, have declined to draw definite conclusions about who’s responsible for this terrible massacre. But unsurprisingly, western media has been less circumspect. There’s a deafening chorus of howls complaining ‘The World’ isn’t doing anything, while President Assad gets away with murdering his own people – again!
I’ve no doubt some of the Twitter users tweeting and re-tweeting this type of sentiment on the #Houla hashtag are genuine in their concern. Yet remarkably few people ever seem to pause and ask themselves the obvious question – why on earth would the Syrian Government want to kill Syrian children? And even if for some reason they did – why would they do so in a way more or less guaranteed to attract international condemnation and renewed calls for intervention?
In other words, ‘cui bono‘?
Who really benefits from this atrocity – and who doesn’t? Surely the insurgents and their foreign backers benefit.. and the Syrian Government most certainly does not! Given that recent bomb atrocities in Damascus have been blamed – almost universally – on extremist opponents of the Assad Government, isn’t it at least plausible they’re also behind this latest horror?
Yet just as mainstream media doesn’t want to give that line of inquiry much encouragement, major ‘human rights’ NGOs like Amnesty have also rushed to judgement. Their weekend tweeps have been hammering away, sneering at the Assad Government and spinning the incident as grounds for outside “intervention”… just like they did last year over Libya.
Every now again again the mass media is so dishonest it gets caught out. The BBC came a cropper only a few hours ago – but there’s been no acknowledgement and I suspect BBC staff would like their ‘mistake’ flushed rapidly down the Memory Hole.
To make it a tad harder for them, this post tells the story for posterity. The information on which it’s based comes from a pro-Syrian tweeter called Hey Joud, whom I’ve found to be well informed and savvy.
A few hours ago the BBC posted a story on its website (Middle East section) entitled Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows. The latest update is given as 04.40 GMT. It has some rather unremarkable graphics – a photo of a UN observer witnessing bodies in sheets and a map showing the location of Houla, near Homs.
However, a friend of Joud’s was smart enough to take a screenshot of an earlier version of this story. Then he/she did some homework – and discovered the dramatic image which it featured prominently was in fact a photo from Iraq dating from several years ago (according to the associated image data, May 2003). It’s featured as image no 52 on this webpage. The accompanying text makes it clear the bodies had been removed from a mass grave.
Hey Joud tweeted about this discovery. That’s how I became aware of it:
By the time I went to check the same BBC’s story online for myself, the photo from Iraq was no longer there. At any rate, it doesn’t appear now on the equivalent BBC webpage, viewed from here in Australia.
I’d guess the most likely explanation is that the original (highly deceptive) photo was taken from BBC archives, used in this article for its high dramatic impact – then quickly replaced when the BBC became aware someone had spotted the deception. If that’s not what actually happened, perhaps the BBC would care to correct me?
This is not the first time I’ve reported on image fakery with regard to Syria. The western media’s sustained attack on that beleaguered nation has now been underway for more than a year. A comprehensive account of all its deceptions and misreporting over that period would fill many volumes.
No-one ever seems to be held accountable for the gross breaches of journalistic ethics that do come to light. Jobs in organisations like Reuters and the BBC must be relaxing. Unlike humble bloggers out here in the ‘real world’, these folk don’t need to bother about truth and accuracy. If they ever do get busted by a wary public, their butt is always well-protected.
George Orwell’s book 1984 is often viewed as a parody of totalitarian states such as Soviet Russia, even though the tale was actually set in England.
I think there’s another possibility. In the early 1940s, Orwell spent a year devising war propaganda for the BBC. Working at the Beeb was probably all the inspiration he needed to write the most famous dystopia of his century..
The BBC again! Using fake information to illustrate Syrian massacre
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?230484-The-BBC-again!-Using-fake-information-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre
The BBC is facing criticism after it accidentally used a picture taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the senseless massacre of children in Syria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl…-massacre.html
Photographer Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.The picture, which was actually taken on March 27, 2003, shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.It was posted on the BBC news website today under the heading “Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows”. .
BBC News uses ‘Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian massacre’
The BBC is facing criticism after it accidentally used a picture taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the senseless massacre of children in Syria.
by Hannah Furness
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html
Photographer Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.
The picture, which was actually taken on March 27, 2003, shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.
It was posted on the BBC news website today under the heading “Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows”.
The caption states the photograph was provided by an activist and cannot be independently verified, but says it is “believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial”.
A BBC spokesman said the image has now been taken down.
Mr di Lauro, who works for Getty Images picture agency and has been published by newspapers across the US and Europe, said: “I went home at 3am and I opened the BBC page which had a front page story about what happened in Syria and I almost felt off from my chair.
“One of my pictures from Iraq was used by the BBC web site as a front page illustration claiming that those were the bodies of yesterday’s massacre in Syria and that the picture was sent by an activist.
“Instead the picture was taken by me and it’s on my web site, on the feature section regarding a story I did In Iraq during the war called Iraq, the aftermath of Saddam.
“What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn’t check the sources and it’s willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That’s all.
He added he was less concerned about an apology or the use of image without consent, adding: “What is amazing it’s that a news organization has a picture proving a massacre that happened yesterday in Syria and instead it’s a picture that was taken in 2003 of a totally different massacre.
“Someone is using someone else’s picture for propaganda on purpose.”
A spokesman for the BBC said: “We were aware of this image being widely circulated on the internet in the early hours of this morning following the most recent atrocities in Syria.
“We used it with a clear disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified.
“Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image and when it was established the picture was inaccurate we removed it immediately.”