In Defense of War Photographers: Part II

By: Greg Mitchell In a column here on Tuesday, I mounted a defense of the overwhelming number of press photographers in the Middle East who bravely, under horrid conditions, in recent weeks have sent back graphic and revealing pictures from the war zones, only to be smeared, as a group, by rightwing bloggers aiming, as always, to discredit the media as a whole.

Which is not to say that this is much ado about nothing. Obviously, Adnan Hajj, the Reuters photographer who doctored at least two images, deserved to be dismissed. A handful of other pictures snapped by others warrant investigation. In a few cases, caption information was wrong or misleading, and required correction. In addition, the controversy has sparked an overdue discussion -- some of it here at E&P -- on the credibility of all photography in the Photoshop age and the wide use of local stringers abroad in a time of cutbacks in supervision.

But, in general, the serious charges and wacky conspiracy theories against the photographers, and their news organizations, are largely unfounded, and politically driven, while at times raising valid questions, such as what represents "staging."

Since my first column, the same blogs are in a tizzy over the "Zombietime" site proving that the July 23 incident, in which two Red Cross ambulances were hit from the air by the Israelis, never happened. Needless to say, there is no such proof, and my favorite line comes near the end when the writer observes "Israel already admitted to carrying out the attack," adding dryly that this is "an interesting point."

Does this stop her? Alas, no. She goes on to assert that "all signs" point to a "clumsy hoax," complete with ambulances towed from a junk yard and "Red Cross workers feigning minor injuries." Perhaps the Israeli missiles were fired from the Grassy Knoll.

In that previous column (which one rightwing blog, with exquisite hypocrisy, labled a "cheap smear"), I briefly mentioned the uproar over comments made by a 23-year-old freelancer in Beirut named Bryan Denton, posted at Lightstalkers.org, a prime site for photojournalists. Denton has placed half a dozen pictures in The New York Times this summer, which would normally discredit him as a source for the rightwing bloggers, since so many of them feel that paper frequently collaborates with Hezbollah in its photo propaganda. But in this case they liked what he'd written, at least initially.

On Aug. 11, he posted a comment on the Lightstalkers' discussion board. By then, his peers were already discussing charges of manipulated photos or bodies of dead Lebanese children being displayed for the cameras in a stagey way. One photog, Stuart Isett, asked, referring to rescuers in Qana displaying the body of one child over and over: ?How are the pictures misleading? The child is dead and the subject was showing this to the cameras?that?s how any intelligent reader would view these images. The man in the image has every right to show this dead child to the world?this happens all the time in terrible situations.

?What this is all about, is an attempt by right wing blogs to muddy the waters and somehow claim, like Michele Malkin and Rush Limbaugh have, that Qana and all the other civilians deaths in Lebanon are staged."

Then, on August 11, Denton posted this comment at Lightstalkers: ?i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj [the Reuters photog] has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples? arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.?

This quote was quickly seized on by the blogs (some of which claimed he was talking specifically about Qana), who then ignored the comments on it by other photographers ? and Denton?s illuminating follow-ups.

On August 11, Denton?s testimony immediately inspired this response from Lebanon by Timothy Fadek, whose photos have appeared in Times, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine and dozens of other top publications: ?Now I?m angry. I want to put a stop to these incendiary rumors right now. I would like Bryan to specify where and when this alleged choreography had occurred, instead of making broad, generalized statements which damages the reputation of all photographers in general and defames Lebanese photographers in particular.

"My personal experience of photographing shoulder to shoulder to many Lebanese photographers has taught me that some can be aggressive and competitive in making pictures, and that?s it. I have no problem with a little pushing and shoving. They are honest and also are very brave, risking their lives by working in a war zone.

?For the last 3 weeks, I have photographed news events in Beirut, Saidon, Tyre, Qana, Bent Jbail, Rmaich, Tibnin, and Nabatye. Not once did I see any photographers direct any events. Any and all armchair quarterbacks sitting in the comfort of their cozy homes can do the profession a favor and stop the speculation and rumor building on this forum.?

On the same day the Lightstalkers commentary by other photogs continued.

Andrew Moore: ?This is an astounding allegation. It?s also an allegation that will undoubtedly be picked up by the blogs and add a huge amount of fuel to the anti-media propaganda war. I?m not disputing your [Denton?s] claims ? you were there and I wasn?t ? but did you document their actions? If not, then why not? Did you challenge them? It?s not exactly a routine occurrence, even in conflict areas to see photographers disinterring bodies in order to stage photo opportunities. It feels irresponsible to make a claim as incendiary as this without providing a great deal more substance.?

M. Scott Brauer: ?Seems like something needs to be done to protect our craft. I wonder why photography is on the receiving end of such a firestorm; I don?t remember anyone calling for the end of news writing after Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass.?

Thorne Anderson, one of the four photographers featured in "Unembedded," the acclaimed book of images from Iraq: ?Photographing the display is not necessarily deceitful, but rather an honest record of the extraordinary ways people react in these terrible circumstances. And a rescue worker displaying a body does not a Media Mogul the rescue worker make. He/She is still a rescue worker. Though the caption for pictures from that portion of the event should read ?Rescue workers display the body of?? rather than ?Rescue workers remove the body of?.?

?Furthermore, the sporadic display of bodies at a scene like that shouldn?t allow us to dismiss the event as merely a salvo in the ?media war? being waged by ?Hizbollah and their jihadi friends? in the ?mainstream apologist media.? And none of this changes the essential, and most important fact that a group of photographers put themselves at great risk to show the result of an Israeli air strike on an apartment building that left 28 people ? among them 16 children ? dead.

?I took a gut wrenching tour of LGF [Little Green Footballs] and a couple of other blogs that are super-hyping the ?staging? issue to an audience of hundreds of thousands in what is a transparent and in some cases explicit attempt to deny the simple fact that an Israeli airstrike killed 16 children in Qana. That assault on the essential truth is a far more reprehensible act of overt media warfare (if there is such a thing) than any angry display of a dead body in the immediate aftermath of an airstrike. Reminds me of those who deny the Holocaust for political purposes.?

After this, Bryan Denton, who had made the incendiary allegations that kicked this off, responded with some regret: ?sorry to have not been specific. just to make this clear. i was not in qana and am not referring to the massacre that took place there. i have been covering beirut, and it was at numerous protests, evacuations as well as the israeli strikes in chiyeh, which unfortunately did not get that much coverage in the media?where i saw this behavior occur. i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that this was not an isolated incident."

He added that ?in hindsight, i realize it was irresponsible for me to post the previous statement because it was not specific enough?again, i am terribly sorry for rattling the saber so hard?.re-reading my words I too should have been a bit more responsible.?

On August 13, more comments appeared.

Jon Anderson: ?While there may indeed be instances of professional abuse such as Adnan Hajj?s imagery, I also know that the majority of people over there covering events are doing so scrupulously, as Timothy [Fadek] reminds us. The problem is not that the photojournalists as a whole are at fault, but that the perception of these failures in the system grows out of proportion and becomes exaggerated, so that the entire profession is mistrusted, and there are no grounds for such mistrust.

"The overwhelming solidity of the coverage coming out of Lebanon at the moment is clear testament to the probity and professionalism of the practitioners. Wire service editors?all editors, really?have to exercise their authority and vet the images and captions properly. The wire services also have to react to the scandal in an appropriate manner and not let the blogging and the fingerpointing cause them to overreact.?

Andrew Testa: ?The blogs I have seen have been basing their ?research? on the times that the photos were put on the wire, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the time they were taken. It may be logical, but they are analysing irrelevant information.?

Bryan Denton then weighed in for the third time, again expressing some second thoughts: ?I want to make something very clear regarding the speculation that has arisen from my comments. I said what i said on this site as a caution to the photographic community, not to call the whole industry into question. I saw what i saw and i commented on it. That said, THE VAST MAJORITY of the many photographers i have come across here, both foreign and Lebanese, are doing exemplary work under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions covering the brutality this conflict has come to embody.

"However it is photographed, a man woman or child killed in an airstrike is still just that. What i brought up was a question of journalistic ethics which i have seen breached BY INDIVIDUALS during my time here. Any one out there who is trying to politicize that is just plain sick, and is moving this further away from the real issue at hand.

?There are hundreds of photographers working here now. Don?t let a few bad apples take the attention away from what the REAL story is, because by the looks of the blogs THAT is exactly what is happening. If anything, I am more interested in the wires investing in their stringers, their work, training, and their careers, not ruining them.?

More comments came on August 14.

Jon Anderson: ?How many errors get through and why? ?So many? is a mere rhetoric. Are newspapers less accurate than blogs? how so, exactly? None of the blogs linked here has proven to be very accurate with the exception of the criticism of Hajj, which is an obvious case. The rest are all unproven and mired in specious argumentation. So tell me, give me proof: how many blogs are actually more accurate than the papers? In what areas exactly are they more accurate? How, in fact, are they comparable in any way, since as I pointed out above most blogs are not journalism, they are commentary after the fact? This is like comparing apples and oranges.?

Then, on August 15, Oscar Sosa at Lightstalkers explored a larger view of staging: ?Personally, I?m glad this is happening. Every now and then we need to evaluate how we do our jobs and to be reminded that we can?t take what we?re told at face value and that there are rules and ethics in our industry.

?Editors send us off all the time to shoot press conferences and ?media opportunities.? We need to evaluate every situation we encounter and make an objective decision as to how we cover these stories. I wasn?t at Qana, but Tim Fadek was. If he says photos weren?t staged, then that?s good enough for me.

?I just want to point out that Hezbollah isn?t the only organization trying to get its propaganda in the news. I cover a lot of stories here in Jacksonville where the people I?m photographing have their own agenda and want the story slanted in their favor. All I can do on an editorial assignment is document what happens. For my personal work or for an ad shoot the rules are different, but for a newspaper or a magazine we have a certain obligation, I think, and it?s good to be reminded about that every now-and-then.

?With all this new technology we?re zooming back and forth just bouncing all over the place. It?s good we?ve slowed down a little and started to talk about this again. Today I sent a picture off to a wire service. It was an editorial shoot and I used a slow shutter speed to blur the background. Usually when I check-in my images I get an ?it?s fine, bye.? Today the editor asked me if the blurring was done in-camera.

?I?m not the least bit worried about the state of journalism or how we?re covering these stories and presenting them to our audiences. Our viewers are smart and know when they?re being fed crap. The critics of journalists have already made up their minds and no matter how perfect we are their opinions won?t change. All we can do is be honest and present our work in an ethical manner.?

Amen to that.

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To read the first part of this column, click here.