The 42 of all Answers

It’s been quite a while since I posted to my blog and actually I was working out quite a few topics I would have liked to talk about when I come back here, but this one is just too amazing and I have to share it first, just in case you didn’t know:

I came across this site, which depicts and analyses different kinds of media fraud in reports of Lebanon in 1996. Most of them committed by Reuters, some photographers as well as editors, and some by AP – speak: mainstream media sources.

The (quite long) article classifies the types of manipulation into 4 different groups: photoshopping, staging of photos by war parties, staging of photos by photographers and false captions by editors:

I was not so much surprised as shocked to realize what is being done to get our attention and maybe even influence our opinion in one direction or the other. Even more so, since you can imagine this might not even be a one-time event restricted to this particular time and place.

I am sharing this not to support any particular side of the conflict, but because I hope it will create a more critical mind next time you get some “news” from the mainstream media…