Return To Haifa Street

The AP is using photographers who have relationships with the terrorists; this is for the purpose of helping to tell the terrorists' "stories." The photographers don't have to swear allegiance to the terrorists--gosh, that's reassuring--but they have "family and tribal relations" with them. And they aren't embedded--I'm not sure I believe that--but they don't need to be either, since the terrorists tip them off when they are about to commit an act that they want filmed.

- Michelle Malkin, April 2005 regarding AP photographers in Iraq

One day it's AP, the next it's Reuters.  It's not often I am the defender of the wire services, but I am when the Rathergate crowd rises up in an attempt to corner the market on the practice of photo analysis.

In light of the hysteria about widespread photo staging and doctoring from the right wing (what lgf has cleverly branded the "Fauxtography Scandal"), Eric Boehlert had a wonderfully sober piece yesterday at HuffPo casting a historical light on our authoritative friends.

The date was December '04 and the right wing was getting steamed up about the supposedly anti-American bias among the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winners for Breaking News Photography.  Of particular concern was one award winning shot depicting the execution-style murder of two Iraqi election officials on Haifa Street in Baghdad.  The right had become convinced that the photographer must have been an insurgent sympathizer.  How else, for example, could he have been in just the right place at the right time, and have gotten as close as he did to the actual event.

Sound familiar?

For a sample of how familiar the moral outrage and authoritativeness sounds, here's a snippet from Powerline on December 25, 2004. (Link.)  (Maybe the real tip off in suspecting this kind of "analysis," however, is that someone apparently didn't have anything better to do on Christmas.)

Powerlines states:

We have written a couple of times about the accusations of complicity with terrorists in Iraq.... The issue relates to the shocking photo, recently published by the AP, showing three terrorists in the act of murdering two Iraqi election workers on a street during daylight. The photographer was obviously within a few yards of the scene of the murder, which raises obvious questions, such as 1) what was the photographer doing there; did he have advance knowledge of the crime, or was he even accompanying the terrorists? and 2) why did the photographer apparently have no fear of the terrorists, or conversely, why were the terrorists evidently unconcerned about being photographed in the commission of a murder?

The photo above is the Haifa Street image exactly as featured on Michelle Malkins' site. (The original Pulitzer shot was much bigger, and was probably the model the conservatives were working from).    Just below, however, is a  different version of the image.  This one is featured on deadparrots.net, and (according to Parrot) was previously offered on YahooNews.  (It's likely, the pic was overly reduced.  Still, the main point  -- irrelevant of scale -- is the suddenly increase in distance between the photographer and the scene.)

How could the photographer have gotten "so close" to the actual event?  In this case, it seems these visual experts had never heard of the telephoto lens.

(...If Boehlert leaves you wanting more, you can also read deadparrot.net's analysis in which Powerline's questions are addressed.)

(image: AP stringer, December 19, 2004.  via pulitzer.org.)

Comments

[Lighkeeper]

Well done BAG. It seems as though you are back on track doing what you do best: rising above the partisanship and dissecting the "texts" in the images themselves.

Its been interesting to watch the dsicussions in response to the last few posts. Its been very difficult to be rational & rationally coherent since this conflict started. Images like these - and the manipulative intent imposed on them by people like Malkin - certainly do not help.

I applaud your concerted effort to see the thing itself - and not all the commotion around it which makes things so much harder to see.

[Kerstin]

The top one looks like it was cropped from a larger scene. Also, the color and grain is substantially different than the smaller one below (at least on my monitor). Telephoto + cropping = skewed perspective on distance.

[Kerstin]

The top one looks like it was cropped from a larger scene. Also, the color and grain is substantially different than the smaller one below (at least on my monitor). Telephoto + cropping = skewed perspective on distance.

[Winston Smith]

I believe the locale of this photo is transliterated as "Haifi." In any case, because Haifa, Israel has been in the news so much recently, it should be mentioned that this is in Iraq, not in Haifa, Israel

[LongWinded]

A clear, cogent analysis.
I want to caution, however, against making the same mistake as the right-wing bloggers whom you excoriate. They have found some demonstrable problems with wire service photographs over the years, and have drawn from this the sweeping conclusion that all such photographs are inherently suspect, and that the wire services at the very least are indifferent to, and perhaps collude with, propagandists and terrorist sympathizers.
Boehlert uses the same warped logic to make the opposite point. He shows that many of these bloggers have advanced conspiratorial lines of argument in the past that proved flawed or wrong, and concludes from this that he need not take their concerns seriously. Rehashing the Haifa Street controversy here seems to imply a similar line of argument - because in both instances, the bloggers employed 'familiar...moral outrage and authoritativeness,' we need not take anything that they say about Lebanon seriously. They're just the 'Rathergate crowd,' and that alone ought to remove their arguments from consideration.
I happen to agree with you on the subject of Haifa Street, but have more questions about Qana. But even if I agreed with you on both points, I would still have to acknowledge that these bloggers were right about Adnan Hajj. That doesn't make them right on these other issues, but it does serve as a useful reminder that no matter how often they may be wrong, it's still worth evaluating each of their arguments on its merits. They're highly attuned to the potential for bias, and although that means they tend to suspend the healthy skepticism that would allow them to separate reasonable from unreasonable concerns, it also means that they're more likely than the rest of us to spot any actual instances of questionable conduct or journalistic malfeasance in these arenas.
So if your point is that these guys are wrong more often than they're right, it's well taken. But if you mean to imply that being wrong on Haifa Street means that they're necessarily wrong now, I respectfully disagree.
--------
Winston: The street was named for Haifa, Israel by Saddam in the 1980s, in an effort to capitalize on support for the Palestinian cause to shore up his regime. The transliteration 'Haifi' more accurately captures the Iraqi pronunciation, but obscures the intended meaning. Take your pick.

[ummabdulla]

And Haifa is an Arab name, because of course it was an Arab city before there was any state of Israel.

[wiesseharre]

"greatflee(ce)'n'lesserflees"
microtells,n'fin,i t ease)

[Chris]

I don't see the problem. They're both exactly the same picture. The top photo is just a cropped enlargement of the bottom shot. Right-wingers' take on its meaning notwithstanding, there's no discussion about any difference between the two shots.
Think before getting sidetracked on a non-issue.

[wiesseharre]

Chris+!

[readytoblowagasket]

Again, as with the Qana post, this post brings up the issue of trained responsible journalists vs. armchair hacks like Charles Johnson and spotlight hogs like Michelle Malkin. LongWinded, you make the same assumption as Little Green Footballs: that if you speak to the "other side" you are colluding with them. This is simply false. It's impossible to get a story without investigating as many angles as possible, although LGF isn't blogging to achieve balance or seek truth. Johnson isn't disciplined enough. It would require some actual hard work and the humility to speak to people who actually know more about a subject than he does. The right-wing bloggers are not intellectually disciplined; they are simply emotive. However, we live in an age of emotive broadcast journalism and reality TV, and we seem not to know the facts from the packaging anymore.

It's easy to research Michelle Malkin's journalistic career and read her one-sided articles on racial conflicts in Cincinnati and Seattle before she made a name for herself as a knee-jerk conservative blogger. I used to live in Cincinnati, so I can see how uninformed she was. She has always written inflammatory opinion pieces presented ("packaged") as articles.

LongWinded, you are much smarter than LGF, but so far your assumptions and conclusions are based on incomplete information. It's not hard to do more research on your own outside of conservative or progressive blogs. But attributing effective arguments to people who present incomplete stories is overstating their importance. Don't confuse a different opinion with objectivity.

[MichaelDG]

Since the mainstream media routinely sends embedded reporters with American and Iraqi army units to gain a good vantage point of the fighting, why is there an outcry at the thought of sending a reporter who travels with militants? I'm not sure what the outrage is about? I suppose the question is one of whether these insurgents are considered terrorists. If you view them as guerrillas or freedom fighters, then it seems to me that it would not be a problem. Which leads to the next question of- how do you define a terrorist? In my mind, a terrorist is someone who deliberately targets civilians. Certainly Al Quaida in Iraq would qualify for the terrorist label. But what about other "insurgents" who target US military personell or government officials?
I would be outraged if I knew that news organizations had reporters who watched while a terror group planted a bomb in a marketplace or on a civilian plane, just so they could get a scoop. However, having journialists accompany military units of all stripes seem common enough and widely excepted. So where exactly is the line drawn?

[MichaelDG]

I might add that looking at these particular photos, if the men being killed are ordinary election officials, I would consider this a terrorist act, and thus any collusion by the media would be morally unacceptable. However, the larger question still stands whether having reporters accompany the "enemy" on non-terrorist missions should be beyond bounds.

[black dog barking]

Two people are gunned down in broad daylight on a busy street of a major world city and the swiftie-mentats seek to divine the state of mind of the photographer? That Powerline fragment holds a master stroke of willful ignorance and practical denial.

Powerline point 2) — …or conversely, why were the terrorists evidently unconcerned about being photographed in the commission of a murder? asks a question that, answered fully and honestly whole truth and nothing but the truth, begs us to confess the utter failure of our mad adventure in Iraq.

What is the motive of this crime? (Robbery? Revenge?) Will this photo be used as evidence at the murderers' trial? How long before Baghdad CSI arrives to collect fiber and tissue samples?

For some reason a title of a Marcel Duchamp piece seems relevant, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors.

[jtfromBc]

wiesseharre + + +

Finally, your brief transmitted vibrations to longwinded sounds, is appreciated, accurate and very, very funny, guess old dogs can tune in to new sounds.

Can you depict terrorists, as in motoring along under a falling 500 pd bomb or riding over a wired IED ?
Perhaps government sanctioned assassinations of elected officials from helicopter gunships might be easier ?

[PTate in MN]

This is random, but thinking about this photograph and the debate surrounding it, I am reminded of basic behavioral psychology. Train a hungry rat to press a lever to get a food pellet. It will repeat the behavior of pressing the lever to obtain the food pellet reward over and over until it is no longer hungry.

But what happens if a researcher decides to extinquish what the rat has learned, that a lever press behavior will produce a food pellet reward? Now, the hungry rat presses the lever, but no food pellet rewards its behavior! What one observes is that the rat will press the lever again. And again. Over and over, faster and faster--and still no pellet. Finally, just before extinction, the rat shows signs of agitation and frustration. It snarls, lashes its tail and poops in its cage. It will bite the researcher or attack another rat in the cage.

I regard the LGF and right-wing blogosphere agitation over these painful ME images as exactly analogous to the rat pooping in its cage during extinction training.

rat = right wing conservatives
hunger = fear
lever = drop bombs, military aggressiveness
food pellet = happy, liberated natives who no longer want to destroy the USA

The right-wingers are fearful of terrorism. They have learned--God knows where!--that dropping bombs behavior and acts of military aggression will produce the reward of happy, grateful natives who won't want to hurt them.

But the evidence provided by the media--photographs like these--is that the dropping bomb behavior is not producing happy, grateful natives. In fact, the photographic evidence suggests that the dropping bomb behavior is producing dead, maimed natives and even more people who want to hurt us.

So, the RWers end up just like the little rat lashing his tail and pooping in its cage when it doesn't get its expected food pellet. They snarl, lash their keyboards and attack the photographic evidence because they refuse to learn that their bomb-dropping aggressive behavior produces dead, angry natives not happy, friendly natives.

[readytoblowagasket]

rat poop = little green footballs

[The Witch]

Has there been any refutation of the alleged "actors" that appear in multiple photographs on multiple days, according to the LGF video montage they've put together? I figure this would be a good blog to go to for the objective response... What are the thoughts of the readers on this particular aspect of the brouhaha?

Thanks in advance...

[Rafael]

Longwinded:

True enough, you can find all manner of mistakes here, but the central question remains, this event happend, yes or no? And did the photographer showed or eskewed the events in such a way as to make the telling of the events innacurate in anyway shape or form.

[Nezua-Limón Xoloquinta-Jonez]

Same fotos. I opened both up, dropped opacity to see through, stretched out, etc. You have to squash the one pic. If you notice, the one is squeezed wider. And the contrast is jacked, etc. But it fits directly over the other one, once you resize. With no change in spatial compression (re: lens)

[Randolph]

The right-wingers and the christianists are trying to dumb down the populace, and they are generally succeeding. Part of that is to keep people from finding out the truth, at least what truths sneak through in the media. If people know the truth, they won't be so susceptible to the propaganda. Not good for them.

Part of that is lie by association. If they can show by hyperbole that one photo is wrong, well then, they can condemn them all. Photo-shopped smoke? Reuters lies. Photographer's close-up of insurgents equals embedded photographer equals all photos of insurgent are lies. And doesn't 'complicity with terrorists' have a familiar ring? Darth's recent comment about CT voters for Lamont being supporters of Al-Queda? Now we know where the bloggers get their inspiration.

It's amazing how many of the righties don't know the meaning of logic nor the application thereof. They use their excited blatherings to garner attention and thereby puff themselves up to be somebody important. Their 15 minutes of fame having just been extended another minute.