Tuesday, August 01, 2006

How Propaganda Is Created

Take a good look at this piece, found over at EU Referendum.

This demonstrates a lot of what I have been saying, about how the enemy uses the media and the media often willingly cooperates. Take a good look at it.

It does not invalidate the seriousness of the tragedy, but it is designed to play on people's emotions to the degree that they use less of their intellect, when forming an opinion on all of this.


Hat Tip: Purple Avenger


Addendum:

Another piece that helps explain this further on the same blog.

Note the part that says:

...what is especially interesting is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they did, in droves. Says Israel Insider, while Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.

8 comments:

All_I_Can_Stands said...

If there were so many children killed at Qana, why do they photograph the same 2 over and over for a period of hours? This whole Qana story is really beginning to smell. Of course our media will be right in there to get to the bottom of the truth, right? Don't hold your breath.

Gene said...

There's a substantial problem with this theory. It requires that the time stamps on the photos he uses refer to the exact time the photos were TAKEN, and not when they were POSTED. I mean, this guy is arguing that many of the photos were staged because the different photos were apparently taken at different times.

Unfortunately the guy at EU Referendum didn't link directly to the photos, so I couldn't see how those particular photos were tagged. But when I checked the one photo he DID link to, at Yahoo, I saw that the time stamps were given by Eastern Standard Time.

So when he says that the timing of that particular photo was at 6:46AM, he doesn't seem to realize that means 6:46AM on the East Coast of the United States, not in Lebanon. He doesn't acknowledge that and doesn't seem to realize the difference. And that doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the accuracy of his claims about the timing of the other photographs. It is perhaps telling that he DIDN'T link directly to them.

And I didn't think that the child was being "offered" to the photographer in those two horrific pictures. It looked more like the child was being handed down to the man in the vest (there's another hand holding the child in the straight-on photo). I may be wrong about this, but it's definitely wrong to say, as the guy at EU Referendum says, that the photos were "clearly posed". There isn't enough information to make such a statement. But a lack of information (or research, or analysis) doesn't seem like something that would trouble his conscience much.

LA Sunset said...

I don't know Gene. The one picture looks like he was posing, he's looking straight at the camera and holding the child to one side. That, to me, would seem like an awkward position.

Here's something I will toss out for you to consider.

I do not know if this is the case here or not. But, I do know that there are some times when a blogger may not want to reveal a source. I realize that the mainstream journalists all want proof, but sometimes the person writing the piece may not want to reveal just how he knows, what he knows.

Does it call in to question credibility? Probably. Does it mean the claim the writer is making is false? Maybe. But it also could be true.

You have to understand that blogging does afford some anonymity to people. Some hide behind it and make absurd claims, some simply state their opinions, and some are saying things that they do not want to be known for saying.

So, I guess how you view this claim made here, all depends on whether or not you tend to believe the media, or you distrust it. I distrust it. The other thing it depends on is, whether or not you believe that Hezbollah and its sister organizations are capable of media manipulation and would stoop this low to achieve it. Again, I believe it.

I believe it because I have a background that allows me to have an understanding of how this enemy thinks. I have no trouble accepting the fact that we are in WWIII. I have no trouble accepting that the enemy is Islamic fundamentalism. And Hezbollah is part of that broad entity. It certainly belongs to that category.

With that said, I think that is entirely possible that this was staged. I would lean more toward that, than towards it being legitimate. But, as always, if you can put your dogs on this and make some significant discovery that can discredit it, by all means do it. Do it and I will post your findings right here on PYY.

But even if that be the case, I still will not reverse myself on what I know and believe about jihadists. It's a core belief.

Gene said...

I don't think that's the case, he does say who the photos come from (Reuters, AP...he even names the photographers). But it would take more legwork than I'm willing to do to track down those photos and find out when they were taken.

Is Hezbollah capable of staging a photo shoot using dead children as props? Certainly. Whether they did so in this case is open to debate, but frankly the images are bad enough that they need no embellishment. Not that that would stop Hezbollah from milking it for all it's worth.

But without more evidence than personal interpretations of photographs, it's a stretch to say that the aid workers there exploited those dead children. That's a pretty horrible thing to accuse someone of, and I'd want a lot more evidence on my side before I said something like that.

Σ. Alexander said...

So far as the relationship between Israel and Arab neighbors, the media tend to use "dependency theory." They are too critical to Israel, simply because it is stronger, and too lenient to Arab terrorists, simply because they are weaker.

No one can expect fair and objective viewpoints.

G_in_AL said...

AOW has put up a new post with video footage of some crazy antics these guys pull that would give credit to this posting.

I'm not surprised they do it, but very surprised they let the cat out of the bag by allowing access to this video coverage.

Always On Watch said...

LA,
I came by here to tell you about the video, but G has already mentioned it. Worth your time (18 minutes). My posting about it is HERE. And from the MSM, no less!

BTW, LA, I also have up the link at which to see the movie Obsession. Not to be missed!

LA Sunset said...

Shah,

//So far as the relationship between Israel and Arab neighbors, the media tend to use "dependency theory." They are too critical to Israel, simply because it is stronger, and too lenient to Arab terrorists, simply because they are weaker.//

Good point. I think that there certainly a good amount of guilt that the world seeks to heap upon Israel and the US. But the rest of the world does not care how indigent the masses are in wealthy oil states, as long as they get their oil. They will play the game.