A Thousand Words
The International Herald Tribune reports on the controversy that won't die over "the harrowing image of a single terrified 12-year-old boy, shielded in his father's futile embrace," during a shoot-out in the Occupied Territories.
If you've seen the images, you'll remember them. And if you run in circles that are highly sympathetic to the Palestinians, you've seen them. "Harrowing" is the right adjective. No wonder the pictures have become iconic of Palestinian suffering. Yet questions hover about whose bullet killed Mohammed al-Duri -- the boy and his dad seemingly were caught in a crossfire between Israeli army and the Palestinian militants. Now doubts have expanded to questions about the veracity of the footage itself.
The questions persist, in part, because of the behavior of the French state-owned network whose Palestinian photographer was the sole media witness to the scene. And the whole situation has echoes of the Iraq situations, criticized by Belmont Club and others, where a local photographer somehow manages to be on the scene when the "insurgents" pull off what looks like a dramatic (and theoretically unannounced) attack.
Richard Landes, the Boston University professor who coined the "Pallywood cinema" quip, said, "I came to the realization that Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes."
At the time of the shooting, France 2's Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, insisted the child was killed by gunfire from the Israeli position. But Enderlin was not present during the shooting.
Rather than exploiting the exclusive, as a media outlet typically would, France 2 offered its exclusive footage for free to the world's television networks. But it didn't give out the raw footage, only an edited version. The network said it cut out the most graphic scenes. Yet those who have seen the raw footage say it does not show a death.
And the network has been cagey about who gets to see the whole 27 minutes of tape that includes the incident.
There's an aside in all this for bloggers. For one, the Herald Trib quietly elevates this virtual romper room to the A-team (no, not THAT A-Team) of discourse. It describes the dissection of the news coverage in books, documentaries, and "the sharply worded universe of blog commentary."
But there's another blog angle in this:
However, that tactic seems to have back-fired:
If you've seen the images, you'll remember them. And if you run in circles that are highly sympathetic to the Palestinians, you've seen them. "Harrowing" is the right adjective. No wonder the pictures have become iconic of Palestinian suffering. Yet questions hover about whose bullet killed Mohammed al-Duri -- the boy and his dad seemingly were caught in a crossfire between Israeli army and the Palestinian militants. Now doubts have expanded to questions about the veracity of the footage itself.
In France, far from Gaza's street battles, the indelible scene is a picture worth a thousand arguments. Here, a debate seethes about whether the ghastly televised footage of Mohammed al-Duri was genuine, misinterpreted or - as one American academic put it - artfully staged "Pallywood" theater.
The questions persist, in part, because of the behavior of the French state-owned network whose Palestinian photographer was the sole media witness to the scene. And the whole situation has echoes of the Iraq situations, criticized by Belmont Club and others, where a local photographer somehow manages to be on the scene when the "insurgents" pull off what looks like a dramatic (and theoretically unannounced) attack.
Richard Landes, the Boston University professor who coined the "Pallywood cinema" quip, said, "I came to the realization that Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes."
At the time of the shooting, France 2's Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, insisted the child was killed by gunfire from the Israeli position. But Enderlin was not present during the shooting.
Rather than exploiting the exclusive, as a media outlet typically would, France 2 offered its exclusive footage for free to the world's television networks. But it didn't give out the raw footage, only an edited version. The network said it cut out the most graphic scenes. Yet those who have seen the raw footage say it does not show a death.
And the network has been cagey about who gets to see the whole 27 minutes of tape that includes the incident.
Esther Schapira, a German producer for ARD in Frankfurt, said she tried unsuccessfully in preparation for her 2002 documentary to see a master copy of the tape and was astonished when France 2 did not share it.
European stations commonly exchange material. "If there is nothing to hide, what are they afraid of?" she said of France 2's initial reluctance.
There's an aside in all this for bloggers. For one, the Herald Trib quietly elevates this virtual romper room to the A-team (no, not THAT A-Team) of discourse. It describes the dissection of the news coverage in books, documentaries, and "the sharply worded universe of blog commentary."
But there's another blog angle in this:
Last autumn, France 2 filed a series of defamation complaints against some of its critics, but it did so without naming targets, simply labeling them as "X." The station's lawyer, Bénédicte Amblard, said that France 2 took this approach because of the difficulties of legally identifying the owners of Web sites, which were harsh in their attacks on the station and Enderlin.
However, that tactic seems to have back-fired:
But that tactic has emboldened critics like Philippe Karsenty, who is one of the station's intended legal targets along with the Metula news agency. Karsenty runs a small Paris-based media watchdog group called Media-Ratings that has called on both Chabot and Enderlin to resign.
"We will offer €10,000 to a charity chosen by France 2 if the channel can demonstrate to us and a panel of independent experts that the Sept. 30, 2000, report shows the death of the Palestinian child," Karsenty said.
