Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Faked Iraq War Photo No Photoshop Accident The Los Angeles Times has dismissed staff photographer Brian Walski for combining two photos showing a British soldier and a crowd of Iraqi civilians. The composite of two photos taken moments apart in the Iraq war apparently was intended to heighten the apparent drama—as if a war wasn't already the epitome of drama. The fakery, which the Times said Walski committed on his own, takes a minute to spot because it's not as obvious as you'd expect. To find it, look in the composite photo at the crouched civilian in white at the far left. The portion, running from just right of that civilian's red scarf over to the soldier's left leg, appears again just to the right of the soldier's right leg: The white back and pants thigh of that first civilian plus the head and black jacket of a civilian, plus another man's face. What makes it less obvious to spot is that the right-side slice includes an extra person's face in the middle. The LAT ran all three photos (the two source originals and the composite fake) and by comparing them you can see that the same civilians appear in both originals, except for the middle man's face, who apparently moved between the first and second photo. So Walski didn't actually clone any of the people in the crowd, but instead used the soldier's legs as the seam between the two original photos. The upshot of the fakery is that the soldier appears to trying to halt the man carrying a child in his arms. Instead, the originals make it clear that the soldier is addressing the group as a whole—not in any way threatening the man and child. An already emotional moment has been completely warped, and its truth distorted. Amazing that anyone (apparently an eagle-eyed reader) spotted it. But what's more amazing to ponder is how long it would take even a Photoshop pro to create such a subtle fake. This wasn't a casual Photoshop "accident." Based on the layering and/or masking required in Photoshop to achieve this, the intent to deceive seems clear. I worked with Walski years ago at the Albuquerque Journal and find it hard to imagine what he was thinking. While common in feature and fashion photography, this kind of thing is way outside the boundary of photojournalism. In juicing the photo, the photographer lost his way, and his job. Followup: Walski himself says as much in a Poynter Institute piece about the fake. 5:11:13 PM    comment []

Monday, March 31, 2003

War Without End: 9/11, Iraq, and Muslim Rage Whether or not you accept the Bush administration's claim that the Iraq war ties directly to the 9/11 attacks, you should watch Thomas Friedman's chilling television report, Searching for the Roots of 9/11, airing on the Discovery channel this week. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times columnist Friedman parlays a lifetime of Mid-East contacts into a penetrating look at the rage many Muslims feel toward the United States. Representing pro- and anti-U.S. views, Muslim diplomats, scholars and poets explain to him the "rivers of rage" that fed the 9/11 attack. In interviews made before the Iraq war began, the issues and circumstances they cite seem certain to be massively aggravated by the attack on Baghdad. Like a wrecking ball swung, the war cannot now be reversed. But Friedman's piece underscores the fundamental importance of what happens in Baghdad (and the West Bank) after the bombing stops. Regime change will do nothing to abate that rage. 12:34:22 PM    comment []

Friday, March 28, 2003

"Silly" Questions According to several news reports this morning, Bush administration officials say the president is frustrated by media questions over whether the war in Iraq is in danger of bogging down. "I think it is fair to say that there's some level of frustration with the press corps," a senior administration official said, adding, "He (Bush) thinks it's silly, not borne out by the facts." However, citing the Iraqi irregulars' guerrilla tactics, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the U.S. Army's V Corps, was quoted Friday as saying, "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against." Does that mean the general also is being "silly?" Of course not. Nor are the media. It's hard to entirely parse the signal now being broadcast by the White House as it attempts to manage civilian expectations about the conflict. But this much seems clear: The administration's arrogance has no bounds. Bush and company exude contempt toward the pesky media, the United Nations, and, really, anyone who may not share their every belief. They seem incapable of simply disagreeing with their critics, but instead insist on characterizing other views as wrong, silly and stupid. This same unbridled arrogance turned the world's post-9/11 sympathies into an ever-widening anger toward America. Whether you are for, against or confused by the march toward Baghdad, it's pretty clear that Bush bungled the diplomatic run-up to it because of this chip on his shoulder. At work, on the playground, or abroad, such in-your-face arrogance makes enemies, loses friends, and just hurts your case. If regular folk had this attitude in their own jobs, they'd be called on it faster than their bosses could say "please come into my office for a moment." I'm not saying the French would have reacted differently if we'd only played nice on the jungle gym. But at least the rest of the playground wouldn't be crowding around the ensuring fight, booing us. The Bush administration winds up looking especially childish when compared to Tony Blair. At the same Thursday press conference that so ticked off Bush, the British prime minister also was asked if the war was not going as expected. Blair didn't bristle and just answered the question, acknowledging the unexpected resistance along the troops' supply routes along the Euphrates River. Apparently, he didn't think it was a silly question—or if he did, knew enough to keep it to himself. 2:07:46 PM    comment []

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Are Bloggers Introverts or Extroverts? A number of bloggers—Jason Kotke and Dori Smith among them—have pointed with knowing nods to Jonathan Rauch's Atlantic piece on Caring for Your Introvert, which opens with a question: Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? It's been said that extroverts recharge by being around other people, introverts recharge by being alone, and when they meet, the extroverts walk away energized and the introverts head home to collapse. So where does blogging fit in this scheme? The Blogosphere is crawling with extroverted pundits eager to talk with the whole world, simultaneously if possible. But there also are plenty of blogs that bubble along quietly, written for an audience of one if that's how it plays out. Does that leave introverts caught in an extroverted blog world? Maybe not. In some ways, blogging combines IM and email, the first seemingly made for extroverts and the second a godsend for introverts who remember how ringing phones used to keep us from getting any real work done. For extroverts, blogging becomes insta-blogging with my blog talking about your blog talking about my blog while we both sit at a conference dias. Oh, it's just so energizing!! For introverts, blogs often serve as silicon journals where the ebb and flow of news and lives can be observed and reflected upon. Where links and trackbacks help staunch the rush and drag of the hours. Breath mint or candy mint? Blogs are none of and all of the above. 12:08:53 PM    comment []

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Laws of Blog: If It Ain't Broke, Just Wait Amid all the breathless blogging about whether Clay Shirky's write or wrong about there being an 80/20 rule at work in predicting who gets read or crushed in the Great Blog Boom (sung to the tune Oklahoma! ), Doc Searls comes up with this gem of an aside : "There are Laws here in Blogville. Such as: For every Thinking there is an Equal and Apposite Rethinking. Which is kind of like For every Traction there is an Equal and Opposite Retraction." To which I'd add another "law": As in herding cats, if you think you know where the blogosphere's headed, you're wrong. 10:57:21 AM    comment []

Celebrate What You Can: Congress Nixes Poindexter's TIA Plan Amid the legitimate concern about pending draconian "Patriot Act II," there's at least this bit of good news regarding cyber freedoms: Conferees in Congress Bar Using a Pentagon Project on Americans. [New York Times] 10:11:44 AM    comment []

Friday, February 7, 2003

Bloggers & Journalists Have Hold of Same 'Elephant' This week Doc Searls and Chris Gulker have been trading licks over whether blogging offers a more or less accurate take on the world than mainstream journalism. If, as in the old story, the world is an elephant, then bloggers and journalists are equally blind as they pat down the same hide and try to decipher what they're holding. Yesterday, Gulker suggested that bloggers had lapped journalists by quickly piecing together the theory that breakaway foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank had damaged the crucial heat-shedding tiles: "...I do believe that the global network and easy-to-use Weblog tools, RSS feeds etc. have fundamentally changed authorship. It has been democratized, and pushed down from the small, theoretically-highly-expert, professional cadre that were the norm in broadcast media." I felt that he was mistakenly establishing blogging's bona fides by slamming journalism, blogging's big brother (or "Big Brother" as some would have it). And I cited The New York Times' Thursday report that NASA had ruled out the breakaway foam as not being the culprit in the crash. Warming up to my rant, I chided him that it's chutzpa to think we're so much smarter or better than traditional journalists, adding that we don't need to tear down anyone else's house to build our own. Well, as they say, that was then. Today NASA itself backtracked and said it cannot rule out the foam in the crash. In my haste to brand Gulker's blog-brag premature, I was, well, premature. But here's where blogs do beat non-Net journalism hands down: I can apologize immediately instead of waiting for the next edition or broadcast. Better still, I can cite my own rant as proof my original point: Our intellectual prejudices can prompt us to fit the world to our theories, when what we need to do is fit our theories to the actual world around us. It's a constant - and very human - temptation. By revisiting the breakaway foam theory, NASA's trying to guard against that - and its own initial explanations. It's a humbling turn and one we bloggers (and journalists) should keep in mind. 10:22:32 AM    comment []

Thursday, February 6, 2003

Gulker's Right About This Part of Blog vs. Press Truly great or amusingly amateur. That sums up the gulf between the observations of Dave Winer and The Washington Post's Leslie Walker about blogs as journalism. This either-or row reminds me a bit of the "will books die" debates during the dawn of the Web. Chris Gulker gets it right on how blogging and journalism fit: "Will blogs kill newspapers and journalism? I don't think so. Will blogs change journalism? Already happening. Will blogs change the economics of, say, newspapers? I think so.... "Blogs will evolve: it will be interesting to see if they can avoid the sins of 'pro' journalism like 'pack coverage' and aversity to risky, creative ways to tell stories. And journalism, too, will evolve as blogs rise, and begin to tell stories more quickly, and sometimes, better than big media." 3:09:04 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Nolan Hester.