Dennis Dunleavy

The last few weeks have proved to be quite troubling for many observers of the media, especially the field of photojournalism.

The level of public scrutiny now given to images by the general public, especially on the Internet, is unprecedented. Political interests on all sides of the Middle East conflict are holding the social conscious of this nation hostage. Increasingly, audiences are called upon to become more visually literate when interpreting news images. News photography, which at one time maintained at least the perception of validity and truthfulness, is being undermined by a growing throng of disbelievers.

During the first two weeks of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, media coverage has become suspect as cases of photo-digital manipulation, events staged for the camera, and captioning errors come more fully to light.  One blog, Zombietime, encourages readers to consider the importance of understand how images can be manipulated. The site offers tips on identifying four kinds of photographic fraud and lists the Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times as perpetrators.

Zombietime’s analysis of news photography concludes four types of common manipulations:

1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.

2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.

3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.

4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

The speed and immediacy of the Internet enables critics, on the left and the right of center, to identity, denounce, and defend news imagery that would otherwise go unnoticed by the masses. News organizations are responding to catch and punish any transgressors that undermine the integrity of the Fourth Estate, but they may be too late.   

Dozens of conservative bloggers including, Michelle Malkin, Times Watch, and Little Green Footballs have been relentlessly scouring the Internet to find examples of media manipulation.

A recent analysis of how the media was manipulated after the Israeli bombing of Qana Lebanon illustrates this point brilliantly. In a short video the German news magazine Zapp shows how one rescuer, referred to as the Green Helmet, directs coverage of the events for the international press. Did Hezbollah choreograph the aftermath of the bombing to solicit outrage and sympathy in the Arab world? Many people believe that wide-scale manipulation of the press corps was and continues to be a reality.

Here is a link to a short survey on Photo-Digital Manipulation

 

The big question now is what happens to our historic collective memory if the images we view are continually the subject of disbelief? Will we become a nation of hate-mongering cynics?

For Hardt (1999), “Photographs, like all cultural products, have conditions and contexts that are based on historically determined cultural conventions, forms, beliefs, and perceptions.”

Despite the current uproar concerning the veracity of photojournalistic practices, there is still the question of how these images, manipulated or not, impact foreign policy decision. Is there anyway to truly calculate the impact pictures have on public perception? Was Israel's cease-fire after the bombing of Qana a sign that the government was reacting to outside pressure after millions of people around the world were subjected to pictures of the dead, especially children?

Following how the media covers an issue like the present conflict in the Middle East is a little like watching a tennis match. One side hits the ball and the audience turns its collective head toward where the ball might land. Then, there is the return, and the audience is driven back. This is the way news images are presented to us. One series of pictures showing the news of the day, all of them fairly similar in content.

Washington Post writer Peter Baker (2006) observes, “With each new scene of carnage in southern Lebanon, outrage in the Arab world and Europe has intensified against Israel and its prime sponsor, raising the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials.”

This summer our Violence and Visual Culture class at Southern Oregon University tracked the first two weeks of the conflict in four newspapers. Students counted the number, size, placement, source, and characteristics of the content from July 14 through July 31 in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian, and the Medford Mail Tribune.

Some of the questions we were trying to answer included:

Are there significantly more images showing dead and dying Lebanese civilians than Israeli civilians? If so, why? If there are more pictures of dead Lebanese than Israeli would world outcry change policy?

The content analysis conducted by the class examines only the beginning of the conflict -- a period of time when most the pictorial representations of the destruction in Lebanon and Israel occurred.

A total of 186 images in all four papers, with the lion's share (n=105) depicted in The New York Times. 

Sixty-nine images depicted Lebanese civilians, while only 26 showed Israel civilians. In another area, 40 pictures showed Israel soldiers, while two images of Hezbollah fighters and 2 of Lebanese soldiers were used.

Can any conclusions be drawn from looking at images that play on the emotions of viewers?

 

Here are some data (early and unscrubbed) from the analysis. It would be interesting to have an online conversation about the possible implications of the role of images on public perception and foreign policy.

 

Attack of the Blog Hackers

There are many wonderful things about this brave new world of increasingly cheaper and faster modes of communication. New technologies provide us with the potential to connect smaller communities with larger communities of like-minded souls.

At the same time, there is this feeling that these same modes of communication are also fragmenting groups of people according to niches and special interests. Traditional mass audiences – one that mainstream advertising and big media has used to sell us products and presidents – are splintering.

Control over content on the Internet is, at present, no longer entirely predictable or guaranteed to be authentic. Reliability of content verifiability and veracity is critical.

In fact, the new technologies that allow us to keep connected and expand our communities is much more susceptible to surveillance and tampering from outside, often anonymous sources. Nevertheless, the convergence from analog to digital is well underway; with it, however, comes this present period of sociological adjustment, insecurity, and vulnerability.

It is reasonable to be suspicious of our virtual environments.

With every new opportunity on the Internet for learning and building community, serious challenges emerge. Because the realm of the Internet is a public space, the best and worst of human nature will prevail.

Weblogging or blogging provides an excellent example of how susceptible our emerging communication platform is.

Recently, a teacher who was conducting some research on the Internet contacted me about my blog, which she claims contained pornographic material on it. She discovered my blog during a search and was shocked to find advertisements for male reproductive organ failures and other such things.

Can people hack into a blog and post offensive material without the author’s permission or knowledge?

Yes, unfortunately they can. Absolutely. There are several ways people can manipulate the content of a blog, even if there is the author believes the material to be secure.

One way is to hack around passwords and security, and another way is to use special software that inserts ads and content automatically through a third-party.

According to Kasia Trapszo, a very informed blogger who writes about new technology, “It's most likely that the person visiting your weblog had adware installed on their computer which inserted pornographic ads into the web page.”

This type of pernicious behavior has been around for a while and will clearly accelerate as traditional forms of communication increasingly give way to the online environment.

Although this is obviously an embarrassing situation to be burdened with, there may be some important lessons to be learned.

The socially responsible things to do in this situation are to: (1) not overreact; (2) fix the problem as quickly as possible; and (3) investigate the cause of the problem.

In this case, I sent a note of apology to the teacher, deleted my blog from the Internet completely, and started exploring how these things happen. What I discovered was sobering. Blogs are susceptible to attack and defacement. In this case, my blog became the target of an individual (some malicious cretin) with too much time on their hands.

We live in a world now where data-mining, aggressive advertising, Trojans, dialers, malware, browser hijackers, government surveillance and info-tracking has become part of everyday life. This, unfortunately, is a much darker side to the silver-lined blogging cloud we have come to know.  It is a brave new world on the Internet and it is far from risk-free.

Bloggers beware.
Play nice.
Educate.
Happy Holidays.