Sunday, July 27, 2014

27-Jul-14: What's scarcer than a photo of a dead Hamas gunman in Gaza?

A photo of a live Hamas gunman in Gaza:

From a photo essay in the UAE news site The National, today [Image Source]
For anyone who cares about the integrity of the news organizations who are supposed to deliver comprehensible objective coverage of what is happening in and from Gaza, there's a question that is rarely articulated: where are the images of Hamas gunmen, alive or dead

The image above, published today, is a rarity. Understanding why involves giving thought to how news images get from the scene of the events to the editor's computer and then into the finished news product. Who is manipulating that flow of news images so that news consumers are seeing endless images of crying women perched atop destroyed buildings but virtually zero visual evidence of armed Gazan terrorists.

Note also the juxtaposition of headline and image:


Headline: "In pictures: heartache as Gazans return to their flattened homes"

Heartache? We're supposed to see the gunmen, along with their invisible close associates the rocket-men, as victims? Our sympathy is being demanded?

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