THE controversy this week over Reuters' distribution of digitally manipulated, falsely labeled and — probably — staged photos of the fighting in Lebanon hasn't been nearly as large as it should have been.
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There are, however, two problems here, and they're the reason this controversy shouldn't be allowed to sputter to its inglorious conclusion just yet: One of these has to do with the scope of what strongly appears to be wider fabrication in the photojournalism Reuters and other news agencies are obtaining from their freelancers in Lebanon. The other is the U.S. news media's grudging response to the revelation of Hajj's misconduct and its utter lack of interest in exploring whether his is a unique or representative case.
Thus far, only a handful of relatively brief stories on this affair have appeared in major American papers. The Times picked up one from the Washington Post, which focused mainly on the politics of Johnson's website. The New York Times, which ran one of Hajj's photos on its front page Saturday, reported that it has published eight of his pictures since 2003, but none were altered. It then went on to quote other papers about steps they take to detect fraudulent images. No paper has taken up the challenge of determining whether there's anything dodgy about the flow of freelance photos Reuters and other news agencies — including the Associated Press, which also transmitted images made by Hajj — are sending out of tormented Lebanon.
After all, it reflects on the honesty and integrity of their product, something that should be protected with every fiber in their being, not covered up and hidden under the rug. Believability is incredibly important for the business model of the mainstream media. If the content of the LA Times become viewed as reliable as the three headed Venusians baby pictures from the News Of the World or the Globe, it may as well close its doors.
When a bottle of Tylenol was discovered to have been deliberately poisoned, Johnson & Johnson recalled every bottle and did everything it could to reassure the public that in the future, it would package Tylenol in tamper proof containers.
So why is the MSM reacting by generally ignoring the story or changing the subject by focusing on the personality of Charles Johnson? I think that there are two explanations that are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they reinforce each other.
First, the MSM doesn’t really think they have a problem. Since their product is so customized and at the same time so evanescent, their concept of “quality control” is laughably out of date. They believe that when you publish several hundred stories a day, and it’s all done virtually “by hand,” they believe that they do a damn fine job by getting it mostly right most of the time. And if they don’t … well their product is usually discarded or used to line animal cages, within minutes or at most hours of delivery. They ask, how do you run quality control on a picture from the other side of the globe when the paper has to begin printing by midnight? Checking for “photo shopped” images or “staged” photos? Don’t be silly, we have to fill those spaces not already sold by our sales department to the advertisers. And staged or altered photos are usually more visually appealing. “Get your dead girl pictures here!” and sell more papers and sell more advertising at higher rates. So the dirty little secret is that editors have an incentive not to look too closely at the stuff they’re printing. And if there is a mistake, it gets thrown out with the trash; sort of like the surgeon’s mistakes. Except surgeons can get sued for their mistakes while the press can’t.
Second, the press is still run by the people who firmly believe the old saying that you don’t pick a fight with a guy who buys his ink by the barrel. In the good old days, what could the victim of a news error do? OK, perhaps a letter to the editor, which the editor, as the judge, jury and executioner, could deign to print … or not. Especially in the day of media monopolies – which includes most US cities – the reader was at the mercy of the almighty editor. You took what they editor shoveled out or … you did without. Complain about content? Newspapers always claimed to be concerned, but they were really not. What were you going to do, start your own newspaper? That’s funny!
Well, that alternative newspaper has arrived. Sure, it’s small, struggling, and has a lot of flaws. And it’s mostly run by enthusiastic amateurs as a hobby. But its circulation is soaring and its editors and writers are real experts on the subject they discuss, not j-school grads whose forte is English composition. And the j-school grads are having trouble coping.
Know what section the LA Times put Rutten's column? Entertainment News.
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