i am personally relieved that the information, which i received from a
responsible source, is actually wrong. it would be far worse for cnn to
do this than it was for a handful of people to celebrate innocent
slaughter, imho. palestinians both here in the usa and abroad have gone
to great lengths to show their horror over such a slaughter.
i am also impressed at the ability of the internet to correct its
misinformation and the speed that it does so. we are truly living in
hypermodern times, at all levels.
thanks again to kevin and molly and eugene for their pursrsuit of the
triuth, and my apologies for helping sustain any falsehoods
gary
On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Kevin Rocap wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> The person who originally suggested that the footage of Palestinians was
> from the 1991 invasion of Kuwait has retracted that statement. He
> tracked down the woman in Brazil who presumably had a copy of the 1991
> videotaped footage. It turns out she had no such videotape, just seemed
> to remember that same footage from 1991. That's a significantly weaker
> allegation.
>
> The retraction is at:
>
> http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64366
>
> An issue, for me, however, is that I don't believe it is unusual to use
> some stock footage to sometimes "illlustrate" a news account that may
> not have footage. The premium in television journalism is on video and
> images.
>
> Generally, should video images be used to "illustrate" if they are not
> specific footage of what is being described? I'm not sure if they are
> used this way, but suspect they are. Perhaps others have first-hand
> knowledge?
>
> In this particular case it seems that the footage may be accurate
> footage from Sept 11. Yet other critics have, I think rightly,
> questioned the use of the video when the celebration was not a universal
> response of Palestinians. Many Palestinians grieved and proclaimed some
> solidarity with the victims, families and other members of the world
> community. But those were not captured in video images. I have seen
> testimony, for instance, from a U.S. United Methodist liaison in Israel
> who has experienced outpourings of grief and support from Palestinians
> and shared that on Sept 11 list discussions.
>
> What is also interesting to me is the amount of effort that was put in
> to corroborating the claim that the footage was from 1991 (the person
> tracking down the alleged source in Brazil). I don't think we generally
> demand that level of corroboration for images we receive from the major
> media giants; perhaps we just grant them a level of authority, or some
> of us are innured to their images, or some of us are skeptical. But
> whatever the stance, my sense is that images have impact and elicit
> responses that may not always be easily analyzed away.
>
> Just some thoughts on the dominance of video media, and the need for
> critical media literacy.
>
> In Peace,
> K.
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:19 PDT