Comparing captions
I just started subscribing to the Mideast Conflict on Yahoo! News Photos in Bloglines. The other day I noticed the same picture twice, the second time with an updated caption.
Caption 1:
A Palestinian girl walks inside her family’s destroyed apartment after it was hit by a missile from an Israeli tank shell in the northern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2006. A Palestinian boy was injured after he was hit by a missile from an Israeli tank shell at this Palestinian house in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian official said. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem Email Photo Print Photo
CAPTION CLARIFICATION - REPEATING WITH CLEAR SOURCING IN FIRST SENTENCE. A Palestinian girl walks inside her family’s destroyed apartment that Palestinians said was hit by a missile from an Israeli tank shell in the northern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2006. A Palestinian boy was injured after a missile from an Israeli tank shell hit this Palestinian house in northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian official said. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
This brings to mind a few questions:
1) How often does Reuters present what Palestinian witnesses without qualification (or identification)?
2) What made them clarify it this time?
3) Should we assume that there was a different reason that the apartment was destroyed that’s not being reported.
Technorati tags: Reuters, Gaza.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad and Israpundit.
I am not sure how closely you all are following recent events in Yugoslavia but in any case you should be.
A parallel situation arises there with news coverage.
On a main Spanish paper yesterday I saw Ratko Mladic described as “the war criminal Mladic”.
And I pick this up today from BBC news
“The Dutch foreign minister has said Ratko Mladic, wanted for genocide during the Bosnian war, is ill and seeking surrender.”
And that is the tone.
The man is presumed to be guilty. In fact he is anything but. There are huge question marks over everything that happemed in Yugoslavia.
This is another BBC heading today which includes
” rumours over the alleged arrest of Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic”.
Note above where they put the word alleged.
You call somebody a war crimes suspect and the job of condemning them is half done.
I see huge parallels between the media treatment of the Jews and the Serbs. And remember Jews and Serbs were massacred in the Holocaust together.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— February 24, 2006 @ 4:51 am