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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (19618)	12/12/2003 2:14:45 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793575

"RantingProfs" BUT THERE WAS A PICTURE! A reader emailed me last night to inform me that he had written the Times' public editor to complain about their lack of coverage for the demonstrations. (It was a great letter too -- suggesting if the Times' reporters started to read some of the Iraqi bloggers instead of just the wire services they might actually get some creative reporting done. Ouch.) But the Times responded by essentially saying, hey, you can't attack us for just having a single paragraph stuck in the middle of a round-up piece with a bad news headline -- because we had a picture! And the picture's caption said thousands participated! Well needless to say this sent me diving for my paper. Had I taken my readers down a garden path? Been unfair to the Times? How could I have missed a picture of the demonstrations? I had to page through the paper twice to find it. There's a picture alright (I don't have the capacity to scan from hardcopy, so you will have to settle for my description.) There's a reason I missed it. It's a beautiful picture, very "arty," but it hardly works to convey the information needed. We're trained to believe that news images are "just pictures," the things we would see if we ourselves could be there -- that the camera is almost a magic eye, opening onto the world, showing us what we're missing because we can't be there, that it is the most objective possible form of news. That is simply wrong. There is a reason it's called "photojournalism." Choice is involved at every level of the construction of the image, starting with the decision about what to point the camera at, moving through how to angle the camera, how to light the photo and so forth, and ending with which of the many images a professional photographer would take the photo editor chooses to publish. This picture shows four columns (to me they look like typical columns you would put in a scene if you were making a movie set and wanted to convey "architectural ruins.") There is a mosque in the background. The camera is pointed up, so what you see is the four men, one perched on each column. Three are waving flags (it looks like a part of the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics.) If you look carefully you can just make out that the second is holding a sign, but there's no way to see what the sign says. Because the camera is angled up towards the sky, the men are highlighted gracefully -- but absolutely no one else is visible. Until you stop and look carefully, because the men are aligned so perfectly with the columns, the eye glides right over the image -- they look like extensions of the columns, or statuary. So the Times is correct, the caption does indeed read, "Taking a stand against guerrillas [note, not terrorism] Iraqis stand on columns in Baghdad yesterday during a rally that attracted thousands." This image could not be better crafted to not attract the eye, and it could not be better crafted to not tell the narrative story of a demonstration involving thousands of people. So, yes, the Times is accurate: they did include a photograph of something that happened at the demonstrations. Did that attract attention to the event, help tell the story of the event, or counter the fact that the text provided (besides a two sentence caption you were unlikely to notice) was inadequate? Nice try. rantingprofs.typepad.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (19618)	12/13/2003 3:00:27 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793575

Touche - pithy - excellent Nadine! Andrew Sullivan's blog has more on this & other buried stories...... THE MEDIA'S SELECTIVE ATTENTION: It was no surprise that the big media did all they could to ignore the pro-democracy marches in Baghdad this week. Sure, they can say they weren't massive; but even a tiny demo in favor of the insurgents would have won front-page coverage. Isn't this a good first question to ask Dan Okrent, by the way? But another story has been buried for partisan reasons. Bush's latest environmental move - reducing emissions from Midwest power plants by a hefty amount - has received the usual cold shoulder from the NYT and WaPo. Over to Gregg Easterbrook, who has built up a great record of dealing with the actual facts of environmental policy: All in all, Bush's announcement sounds progressive and important. So how did the media play it? The New York Times, which has had the incredible, super-ultra menace of Midwest power plants on page one perhaps a dozen times since Bush took office, put the plan to end the problem on page A24. The Times story was a small box cryptically headlined. "E.P.A. Drafts New Rules for Emissions From Power Plants." The Washington Post put the story on page two but under the headline, "E.P.A. Aims to Change Pollution Rules," suggesting something ominous, adding the subhead, "Utilities Could Buy Credits From Cleaner-Operating Power Plants," neglecting to add that credits could be purchased only if the result was an overall decline in pollution. The proper placement for this story was page one--where the anti-Bush environmental stories always run--and the proper headline was, BUSH ORDERS DRAMATIC POLLUTION REDUCTION. But you didn't see that, did you? No, we didn't, Gregg. But did you really expect fairness on the environmental issue? For a swathe of reporters, this is not a matter of empirical reporting; it's a matter of faith. Bush cannot be pro-environment because he's Bush. andrewsullivan.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (19618)	12/13/2003 3:05:16 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793575

I forced myself to watch the 1st half of this today. Andrew Sullivan watched even less & got it right IMO...... ANOTHER 'ANGELS' REVIEW: "I turned it off after the first hour. As a socially progressive Republican from a Catholic background, I was looking forward to what promised to be a nice mix of spirituality and commentary on one of our most pressing cultural issues. It wasn't the leftist propaganda that turned me off - although that certainly didn’t help - but the biggest problem I had with the film was that it was just a bad movie. The scenes of the movie that supposedly brought spirituality into the mix were a convoluted mess that reminded me of a cheesy play. The characters weren't written poorly, but the screenplay wasn't written well as a whole. Pacino, of course, carried the movie as much as he could. And the one thing that could have redeemed the film, its attempt at humor, failed miserably - even the supposedly humorous scenes seemed to turn their nose up at the audience. More than anything, it was just a long, drawn out, poorly written film that exuded a holier-than-thou leftist elitism. I just wish critics would have the guts to say so." andrewsullivan.com