News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.It's the unforced errors that show what you're made of.
...The deception was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.
Technorati Tag: Reuters and Reutersgate.
Muslims urged to buy influence in world media
RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001.Let's put aside the current pro-Arab slant of the media that brought us ReutersGate has consistently bent to the will of Moslem pressure and threats.
"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.
Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.
Washington's response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider "war on terror", has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack.
A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West.
"The fierce attack on Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks has forced us into a defensive position on our faith and understanding of our tolerant religion," Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech.
"Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world," Feki said, citing Israel's recent 34-day war in Lebanon as one issue where Muslims needed to make their views and influence felt. [emphasis added]
Al-Walid also criticised US media which he described as "in general ... pro-Israel." But he also accused Arabs of not being pro-active in fighting the allegedly slanted media.Only 30 minutes?
He said that during last month's street protests in France, the US television network Fox -- owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in which Al-Walid himself has shares -- ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots."
"I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty," he said.
"Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."
Two of its officials have been convicted on terrorism charges, and as an organization, while CAIR forcefully attacks critics of radical Islam, it has yet to condemn by name any Islamic terror organization other than al Qaeda—which it denounced only reluctantly several months after 9/11.Mowbray points out that Ellison has also received aid from other questionable sources:
CAIR’s former communications and civil rights coordinator was convicted in 2004 on terror-related charges of plotting to wage violent jihad against the U.S., and the founder of its Texas branch last year was convicted of terror-related charges.
* Shahzeb Gaziani gave $500 on July 22. He is an official with the Peace and Justice Foundation, whose president was a featured speaker at a December 2004 event titled, “A tribute to the great Islamic visionary Ayatollah Khomenei.” Khomenei, of course, called America the “Great Satan,” was responsible for the kidnappings of Americans at the Embassy in Tehran, and his regime helped create Hezbollah.Mowbray also did a five part piece on Ellison at Powerline. In the last part, Mowbray writes that
* Esam Omeish, who gave $500, is president of the Muslim American Society, which authorities believe is the political front in the U.S. for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the ideological forerunner of al Qaeda and many other Islamic terrorist organizations.
* Samir Abo Issa gave $500 on July 22. In 2003, he helped post bail for Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who is now facing trial on terror-related money laundering charges.
A Minnesotan who does not support Keith Ellison e-mailed me his contention that I needed "something more damning than a list of checks." The problem with Keith Ellison winning the Democratic primary tomorrow in the very blue MN-05 district is much more than just the people from whom he's receivedIt is not about denying the right to fight anti-Moslem sterotypes.
checks.
Ellison has tried to downplay his history with the Nation of Islam and its ugly penchant for racism and anti-Semitism. His willing association currently with people who are self-identified Hamas supporters, such as Awad, or any of his ilk undercuts any claim that Ellison has genuinely evolved. Anyone truly outraged by hatemongering or anti-Semitism would never accept money donated or collected by the likes of Awad, let alone stand next to him as he headlines a fundraiser.
But beyond that, we need to recognize on this 5th anniversary of 9/11 that our war is not just a military struggle or even one against supporters of terrorism. People like Nihad Awad, Shahzeb Gaziani, and Esam Omeish cannot be allowed into legitimate circles.
It's not enough to oppose "terrorism." One must also be vocal in opposing the root cause of most terrorism today: radical Islamic theology which demonizes Jews, Christians, and Americans, and holds that any non-Islamic government is inherently illegitimate.
Awad, CAIR, and Muslim-American Society, among others, are extremely vocal in their opposition, but never against radical Islam, only against its critics. They serve as the intimidation industry, doing their best to stifle even legitimate debate. They have successfully instilled fear in the media and government, which is precisely why Ellison's past with the Nation of Islam received such scant attention in the local mainstream media. Had it not been for Minnesota Democrats Exposed or Power Line, local MSM likely would have ignored it altogether.
Make no mistake about it: CAIR is an enemy of free speech, and thus an obstacle in our struggle to preserve freedom. A genuine Muslim civil rights organization could have been beneficial not just to Muslims, but the public at large. But that's not the path chosen by CAIR, who instead primarily savages critics of radical Islam, while maintaining silence on Islamic terrorism and its root cause.
CAIR already enjoys far too much legitimacy for an organization founded by two men who have both expressed explicit support for Islamic terrorism. Imagine what would happen if CAIR's executive director can claim credit for helping elect the first-ever Muslim Congressman.
Technorati Tag: Media Bias and Israel and Moslems.
ludicrous news story comes from Agence France-Presse: an article titled "US Muslims plagued by discrimination after 9/11 attacks."The AFP piece alleges that:
Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11.There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges.
And it seems to be getting worse.
"Suspicious" does seem to be the operative word when it comes to these claims.
A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.The FBI breakdown of the hate crime attacks in 2004 based on anti-religious bias, shows that the Jews are far and away the majority victim of religion-based hate attacks.
Bias motivation Incidents Offenses Victims Known offenders Anti-Jewish 954 1,003 1,076 330 Anti-Catholic 57 57 68 37 Anti-Protestant 38 43 48 28 Anti-Islamic 156 193 201 124 Anti-Other Religion 128 140 147 68 Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 35 37 39 14 Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 6 7 7 3 Total religion: 1,374 1,480 1,586 604
As Daniel Pipes notes, Jews constitute 69% of the victims of such attacks, while Moslems constitute 11%.
Clearly, the fact that the threat to Jews is greater is not helped by CAIR itself (some of whose board members have been convicted of having connections to terrorist groups) when in August it hosted a forum for Mearsheimer and Walt on the influence of the 'Israel Lobby'.
But Daniel Pipes goes a step further. He examines an annual report put out by CAIR entitled Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005 which the media used as the basis at the time to come out with headlines about the dramatic rise in anti-Moslem hate crime.We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:Pipes goes on to give further examples.
CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.
CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?
CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime report it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.
CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incident and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.
CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."
CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press. [emphasis added]
Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.
any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report.Pipes also has a post that refers to 2 posts by Michelle Malkin back in 2003--Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths about false accounts of hate crimes against Moslems.
To date, so far as I can tell, not only has CAIR not apologized for falsely accusing non-Muslims of hatred and bias in the respective communities where these hate crime hoaxes occurred, but the press releases on CAIR’s website go uncorrected even after the truth is revealed. For instance, a press release related to a staged hate crime in McAllen, Texas still appears today without any correction or update whatsoever, even though multiple media outlets, including even the New York Times, had debunked the incident as a hate crime hoax perpetrated by the “victim” almost two years ago.The staging of hate crimes continues in July 2006--as the same article from The American Thinker describes in detail.
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Technorati Tag: CAIR and Islamophobia and ReutersGate.
the accumulation of episodes of fakery in recent weeks, both sophisticated and crude, leads me to believe that we'll see faked video of professional quality becoming a commonplace political item in the pretty near future.In the meantime, the most effective tool out there for uncovering the faked photos being used by the media is your friendly neighborhood blog.
And this poses a significant problem. In a democratic polity -- or even one that's driven by things like "world opinion" -- faked news poses a real threat to decent decision-making. Worse yet, the likely outcome of widespread fakery will be a tendency on the part of people to simply dismiss news that they don't want to hear. (And we already see enough of that phenomenon as it is).
I wish there were a technical solution to this problem, but that's probably pretty far away. May sent me a link to the Columbia University TrustFoto project, which is aimed at detecting fake still images. So far, it's not very good -- I gave it an obvious fake and got a rather inconclusive response. It's a great idea, and the technology will no doubt improve, but will it ever be good enough to reliably distinguish between genuine and phony images? Not anytime soon, anyway. And identifying phony video is probably even harder.
Technorati Tag: ReutersGate and Photography.
You idiot! You total blistering idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death - being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people - literally millions - have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States - they don't think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase "released unharmed" into their lede. Way beyond certain.Glick also notes this myopia in the coverage of Centanni and Wiig, and it is not limited to the New York Times:
There's a deeper explanation for how paragraphs like this can get written. It's not really bias, as much as it is the blind spots imposed by any ideology. And within that dynamic are questions about the degree of myopia and the room for self-reflection that particular ideologies allow.
While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted that the men were flanked by Palestinian "security forces," and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.But that was not the only item that was in the news that day. Reuters claimed that Israel had fired missiles at their reporter, Fadel Shada.
No mention was made of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just such PA "security officials," or that Haniyeh is one of the leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations in the world, an organization that the majority of the "beautiful, kind-hearted and caring" Palestinians voted into office last January.
That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether they had been given the option of not giving a press conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can be little doubt that a second press conference by the two men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them, will draw far less media interest. After their press conference, the two men became yesterday's news.
Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the battle scene, "I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep flew open." He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose vehicle was just hit by a missile.
But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the purported missile attack give no indication that the car was hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned. Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed.
Yet the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana's vehicle isn't even shattered. In the photographs taken of Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white.
I did not see these pictures in the media coverage of the purported IDF attack on the Reuters and Iranian cameramen. I saw them on Powerlineblog Web site [see here and here]. I did not see any questions raised from either the Israeli or the international media on the veracity of Shana's tale, which of course, provides a nice balance to the Centanni-Wiig hostage story.
All of this of course brings us back to the problem of the manipulation of the media by Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the complete willingness of the media to be led by the nose in what information is available and how it should be presented.
AS IS the case with the Palestinian war against Israel, one of the most notable aspects of Hizbullah's latest campaign against Israel has been the active collaboration of news organizations and international NGO's in Hizbullah's information war against Israel. Like their rogue state sponsors, subversive sub-national groups like Hizbullah, Fatah and Hamas, see information operations as an integral part of their war for the annihilation of Israel and defeat of the West. And their information operations are more advanced than any the world has seen. As becomes more evident with each passing day, they have successfully corrupted both the world media and the community of NGOs that purportedly operate in a neutral manner in war zones.
Glick sees this as part of a wider problem.
It is not a coincidence that I saw the pictures of the Reuters' vehicle on Powerline and not in the media coverage of the purported attack. Both the global media and the international NGO community abjectly refuse to investigate themselves. As democratic governments and their militaries have proven incapable of dealing with the phenomenon (in part because they seek to curry favor with the media and the international NGO community), the blogosphere has taken upon itself the role of media watchdog.The role of the blogosphere in all this is helpful, but a citizenship that is more critical and skeptical of its media is essential.
Technorati Tag: Media Bias and Israel and Reutersgate and Centanni and Hamas and Hezbollah and Hizbollah and Pallywood and Hezbollywood.
Faking the photographsThen I remembered that photos are not the only thing Reuters fakes--they fake bylines too.
Really crudely done photoshopping -- with obvious political intent -- has gotten past the editors at Reuters in the last few days. Quite apart from the dismaying ineptitude of missing the clear evidence of manipulation that bloggers will eagerly and easily throw in their faces, we should worry that there is much more subtle and expert use of photoshopping going on all the time. These recent incidents should wake us up and make us mistrust every photograph that is ever offered up as anything other than an imaginative illustration.
This is from a story that Reuters news service ran this week with my byline:Eventually, the article went through a number of revisions, till some incidental sentences of Wrenn's that appeared at the end had been totally removed.
Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday. . . . Media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters."Got problems with that?I do, especially since I didn't write it.
Here's what I sent last week to Reuters, a British news agency that compiles news reports from all over the world:
ELIZABETH--In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine--even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq.What I typed and filed for Reuters last week goes on in that vein. They asked me if they could use my byline, which I had typed at the beginning of the story I sent, and I said that would be no problem."I think there's a lot of false information about her story," said Amber Spencer, a clerk at the town's convenience store.
Palestine resident J.T. O'Rock was hanging an American flag and yellow ribbon on his storefront in Elizabeth in preparation for Lynch's return.
Like many residents here, he considers Lynch a heroine, even if newspaper and TV reports say her story wasn't the same one that originally attracted movie and book deals.
By Tuesday night, the quote was gone and Reuters was siphoning information from television reports. The beginning of the story was toned down. The part about "media fiction" was removed. But even then, my byline remained.Or Reuters.
I understand that news wire services often edit, add, remove or write new leads for stories. What amazed me was that a story could have my byline on it when I contributed only a few sentences at the end--and in later versions I didn't contribute anything at all.
The stories contained apparently fresh material attributed to sources I did not interview.
Maybe that's the way that wire service works.
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Reuters' head of PR Moira Whittle said in response: "Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures."
"As soon as the allegation came to light, the photograph, filed on Saturday 5 August, was removed from the file and a replacement, showing the same scene, was sent. The explanation for the removal was the improper use of photo-editing software," she added.
In his analysis of the doctored photo, LGF also noted the identity of the person who took the picture:
The photographer who took this picture (probably also the person who doctored it), Adnan Hajj, is rather well-known to LGF readers. In fact, rather well-known to the entire world.
He also took this infamous photograph from Qana of the guy in the green helmet, parading a dead body around for pictures, featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide: Yahoo! News Photo.
Meanwhile Honest Reporting has 3 basic questions that Reuters needs to answer:
That same Honest Reporting communique also features a piece on media manipulation by Hizbollah--it features an article by Tom Gross in the National Review entitled The Media Aims Its Missles.
Gross writes about the BBC featuring audience comments that Israeli attacks are likely to increase support for Hizbollah, and then notes that it is not Israel who will attract recruits to Hizbollah as much as the biased and inflammatory reporting from the Western TV stations:
While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of World War II air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed.Gross also quotes journalists who admit that Hizbollah has controlled their reports and notes the lack of balanced coverage in regards to Hizbollah's attacks and their effect in Israel.
A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites like airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah men and weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.
Read the entire National Review article.
Update: Pajamas Media has all kinds of information about Reutersgate, including the news that Reutersgate is now an entry in Wikipedia.
Over at The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez wonders about what may be another Adnan Hajj production.
Reuters own article on the story is here, including the photographers claim that it was an accident due to poor lighting and an ettempt to get rid of dust marks.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and Lebanon and Hizbollah and Hezbollah.
