The 'Smog of War' or a 'smokescreen of sloppiness' ?

[Click Mr Bagel to Read the report!]

The Guardian's Readers' Editor, Ian Mayes, responds to Zombietime and HonestReporting criticism of reporter Suzanne Goldenberg's coverage of the Red Cross ambulance incident. Mayes writes:

What the zombietime website, which takes issue with both of these Australian rebuttals, does show is a fairly large number of inconsistencies and anomalies in the reporting and pictorial coverage of the event across the media: whether these are larger in number than might normally be expected to occur in reporting from a war zone is a matter for conjecture. A Guardian picture archivist with a special interest in images from areas of conflict, who carried out extensive research for me, concluded that there was cause for doubt about the nature of the munitions involved and the manner of their delivery, but not in the reality of the attack. Suzanne Goldenberg told me: "I remain confident that the story was true." She points out that she and Sean Smith reported the story first hand and independently and did not rely on what purported to be amateur video footage of the incident.

taken from Backspin

That's a Guardian white wash. The essence of the mis reporting isn't that the ambulance was involved in errant military fire, or injuries didn't result, the essence is exactly what it was trumped up to represent. The hole thru the cross was trumped up to signify a deliberate precision targeting of the Red Cross ambulance itself.

This was used as a signifier of the barbarism of the Israeli armed forces' at the time it was an incredibly strong [misrepresented] image. The strength of the message, its subtleness may now seem less apparent but at the time this very story was whipping frothy mouthed anti Israeli Zealots around the world.

Its amazing in the so called 'fog of war' how many inaccuracies were against Israel, for them to be true ' fog inaccuracies' as the Guardian would like to infer then they would have been far more randomly distributed.

The same 'fog of war' didn't seem to imped the devastatingly fast sending and recieving of these images, if any thing it seemed to streamline the editorial process, drop your objectivity boys we have a war on, a war of Press Scoops, and first to the press.

I'm so sick of seeing pathetic Journalism with even more pathetic excuses:
"well it was 'mainly' right its just the numbers were [grossly] wrong."

If the Media had been in charge of targeting instead of reporting, the casuality count would have been in the the millions not just over a thousand. But this would have been alright, because all those accidentally 'Journalised' people could read a pathetic excuse for why Journalists should be trusted to convey information honestly.

As for the Amateur 'footage' showing the ambulance roof damaged by a ' direct Israeli Missile' which was played across British and Australian Television for days (Especially as a News intro), surely the fact it was 'Amateur' footage should have been a red flag to the media rather than a green flag, 'a race to see who can show it first, and then make a retraction later if we have to.'

The Media relies on the 'fog of war' to act as a coverall for sloppy Journalism that would normally not see the light of day on the better media outlets.

Under the guise of the 'fog of war' we have to tolerate even sloppier Journalism and put up with the 'Smog of propaganda'.

I dont know what's worse the Photo shopped Smog or the White Washed aftermath.

BagelBlogger

References:

BackSpin: Ambulance Anomalies TB

Backspin , thanks for the link.
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