Monday, March 31, 2008

Media Fish in a Barrel

OK, so it's British media writing about wicked America, so the fish are particularly fat and slow, but still ...

The Independent informs us we're flushed down the great toilet. The article is titled "USA 2008: The Great Depression"

It is illustrated with this photo:



Which bears the caption "Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York".

A little poking around on the Getty archive Web site, and I found an identical photo here.

It has this caption:

New York Mayor Hands Out Coats To The Poor

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 30: People wait on line to receive donated coats at the kickoff of the 17th annual New York Cares Coat Drive a the Bowery Mission November 30, 2005 in New York City. Bloomberg helped give out coats to residents of the Mission and the coat drive hopes to collect and distribute 80,000 coats to needy New Yorkers by New Years. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Emphasis added by me. Inability to tell "5" from "8" added by the Independent.

UPDATE: And here's a site that claims to be "drilling beneath the headlines" and misses this error entirely in its approving link to the Independent -- while illustrating its own story with a famous photograph from the 1930s -- not noting it as such.