I have nothing interesting to say right now about the war in Iraq. Which has now begun. Finally. I've been numbed into submission by listening to other people who had nothing of any value to say trying nevertheless to say something to their TV audiences for the last few hours.
So, instead, I'll just mention a little blurb that doesn't seem to have made its way onto the front page of any blog I can find, but which deserves some attention while we're waiting for the war to develop more, er, shock and awe.
Mis-captioned Reuters photo transforms accidental death into homicide.
Joe Smith, age 21, came with his college friend Rachel Corrie this past Sunday, March 16th to Gaza to protest against terrorist home demolitions as part of his activity with the International Solidarity Movement.
Both Joe and Rachel had studied at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington.
Joe was witness to Rachel's tragic death late that afternoon, and described what he saw to my colleague, recounting that "she was sitting on a mound of earth in front of the bulldozer. The earth started to move under her when the bulldozer digs in. You have a couple of options you can roll aside-you have to be very quick to get out of the way. You can fall back, but she leaned forward to try to climb up on top. She got pulled down, and the bulldozer lost sight of her.Then, without lifting the blade, he reversed and she was underneath the blade". Joe Smith did not sound accusatory nor vindictive against the IDF bulldozer driver.
So why did the world have a different impression of what had happened?
Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
The picture distributed by the Reuters News Agency showed Rachel Corrie standing in front of the Bulldozer with a megaphone. That is the picture that appeared on page three of the New York Times on March 17, 2003
The Reuters caption stated what the picture said that this picture was taken before Rachel Corrie was crushed by this bulldozer, giving the reader the distinct impression that Rachel Corrie had been standing with a megaphone in clear sight of the bulldozer.
That would have made this act some kind of homicide.
The next photo distributed by Reuters showed Rachel lying in front of the bulldozer.
And then I began to notice something.
The lighting of the Gaza sky was different in both pictures of what were supposed to be sequential shots.. The landscape in each picture was different.
I checked with Reuters to find out about the discrepancy of the picture sequence. The Reuters photo editor said, however, that these were NOT their pictures. They were sent by the International Solidarity Movement. Indeed, these pictures did appear on the ISM web site at www.palsolidarity.org. The Reuters photo editor assured me, however, that the pix were clearly labeled as ISM pictures. A check with the Reuters web site showed that they were labeled as Reuters pix.
A call back to Joe Smith about the sequence of the pix revealed another unknown fact. Smith said that no one was on the spot with a camera before Rachel Corrie was mauled by the bulldozer, and that the picture of Rachel with the megaphone had been taken many hours earlier.
Well, what a surprise! Some of these discrepancies were noted by several bloggers and blog commentators previously, but not everyone has the access or the determination to fact check that David Bedein has.
So do read the full article for the full story of the follow-up. The misleading photos have now been removed from the Reuters site, and websites (like www.lizziegrubman.com/rachel_corrie.htm) that linked to them there now have blanks where the photos should be. But they're still on dazzling display here, of course, as well as on numerous Indymedia sites (where they're correctly labelled and linked as "ISM handouts").
