INDCJournal: Tsk, Tsk (The Washington Post's Dishonest Presentation

May 23, 2005

Tsk, Tsk (The Washington Post's Dishonest Presentation - UPDATED)

Posted by Bill

Howard Kurtz wonders about the fallout from Newsweek's false Koran-flushing story in today's Media Notes column:

The bashing of Newsweek over its horribly handled item on Koran desecration has mushroomed into a sweeping indictment of the media, which some conservatives now accuse of deliberately slandering the military.
...
Is any of this true? Or has Newsweek's retracted story simply handed the right a new club with which to beat journalists?

Fair enough; Kurtz is entitled to his opinion, and the article is more or less even-handed, in the sense that it proffers a variety of opinions from across the political spectrum. But ...

In the print edition, the column runs next to a picture of a protest sign that reads "Newsweek Deserves to be Banned," with a caption of, "The Koran story is a new wedge in the culture wars between left and right."

Obviously, since those on the "right" are the ones shellacking Newsweek, it would appear that some right wing protestors have expressed that "Newsweek Deserves to Be Banned," which is a pretty fascistic sentiment. There's one problem with this appearance: you can't tell from the close cropping, but the sign is actually from a rally of Indian Islamists. A different shot of the same sign (there are many):

(New image via Knowledge is Power, who points out some confusion on the part of the protestors)

The WaPo's version only shows the sign, and they've effectively projected the impression that some domestic right-wingers are clamoring to ban Newsweek, by using an artfully presented and captioned picture of Islamic protestors expressing decidedly non-Western sensibilities regarding censorship.

Congrats to the Post - effectively undermining any of Kurtz's points about overblown perceptions of ideological bias with a silly and ridiculously misleading edit.

AND AN EXTRA EDITING BIAS BONUS:

The other day, the "Express" version of the Post, which is handed out at various Metro stations as a commuter read, had an interesting headline describing George Galloway's testimony before the Senate regarding his bribery implication in the Oil-For-Food scandal.

Was it, "British Lawmaker Questioned for Iraq Bribery Ties?" Nope.

How about "UK MP Denies Pre-War Bribery Charges?" Nope.

It was something like (paraphrasing)...

"Lawmakers Rebuked Over Iraq."

As in, the lead was that the criminally charged British MP flew to Washington, DC in order to lecture our Senators for their decision to go to war. What an astonishing choice of headline.

UPDATE: See Goldstein's thoughtful post about blogger swarms and media bias.

UPDATE: The Countertop Chronicles discusses Newsweek and that Express Headline, comparing the entire Galloway story to more accurate coverage. To be fair, the text of the Express story was an AP article; it was the headline (specifically written by Express editors) that was really bizarre.

UPDATE: Text edited for clarity/accuracy. Image swapped for another one.

Posted by Bill at May 23, 2005 12:47 PM | TrackBack (8)

Comments

Did u see Robert F Kennedy Jr's rant in Vanity Fair about how Bush won the election because the right-wing media misled the public? No mention of Rathergate, Easongate, the infamous ABC News memo, just a lot of screaming & yelling about Fox! Rush! Fox! Rush!

The effete elite don't recognize liberal bias because they're up to their neck in it, & they don't know a single person who disagrees with them. Note that Walter Cronkite is a liberal icon because in the Sixties he spoke out against the Vietnam War, but Fox News anchors are hacks because they wear American flags

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at May 23, 2005 03:49 PM

Good post,

not to be a link whore or anything, but I put up a pretty extensive post on the seeming disparity between Kurtz's Newsweek Defense and the Express's coverage of Galloway last week. As part of it, I transcribed the entire Express article (since the Post isn't kind enough to provide a direct link to the electronic version).

Posted by: Countertop at May 23, 2005 04:20 PM

The problem isn't that the WaPo cropped the photo; it's how they presented it out of context. The original pic on Yahoo is exactly the same, but being 96th of 120 photos, if you got that far you know it's part of Islamic protests, not some right-wing (what's wrong with these people, don't the have the guts to call us "facist?") demands. Photo attribution is: (AFP/File/Indranil Mukherjee)

Either that or Yahoo switched to the same version to cover for the WaPo. It says something about the creditibility of the MSM that I don't consider such a consipricy theory much of a stretch.

Posted by: ubu at May 23, 2005 05:16 PM

ubu -

please show me a link to the picture cropped in the exact same way as the Post's version (not that it changes the misleading context)

#98 in that Yahoo series is unrelated, according to my link. The pic that I presented and linked is #96.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 23, 2005 05:23 PM

Maybe they cropped it because the guys head is so out of focus it ruins the photo.

Posted by: ed at May 23, 2005 05:26 PM

ed, you kidding me? There are about 3 versions of Indians holding that sign, some crystal clear. And what does an Islamic protest advocating for censorship have to do with the domestic "right-left" divide noted in the caption? They misrepresented who was holding the sign with the caption ...

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 23, 2005 05:28 PM

yes, i was kidding

Posted by: ed at May 23, 2005 05:45 PM

Dude, don't scare me like that. :-)

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 23, 2005 05:57 PM

Great catch Bill, thanks for sharing.

My God, the irony of putting a misleading photo next to a piece defending against claims of biased journalism. You couldn't write fiction like this; it wouldn't be believable.

Posted by: TallDave at May 23, 2005 08:03 PM

Bill,

My bad... I thought the version on your site _was_ the WaPo version, and the link was to the Yahoo version for comparison. I don't register with those annoying sites, so I didn't see the WaPo pic for myself and realize the difference. You'd think I'd learn that people who have more time to blog generally do a better job of it than me. Sigh.

Sorry for the panic attack. :-(

Posted by: ubu at May 23, 2005 08:16 PM

I think the online article may have changed, because I read the Kurtz piece early this morning, and I think it had the pic in it then (I could have seen it somewhere else, but I doubt it). When I saw it I thought to myself, damn, we have to do a better job isolating these nut jobs from the mainstream Republican party. Yep, they fooled me, the bastards.

Posted by: Taters... PO-TAY-TOES! at May 23, 2005 09:25 PM

y'all still watch the three big news shows? why?

i guess it would be worth something only in an effort to see how they are twisting facts in each episode.

and i call them episodes. they're just like bad sitcoms. not worth my time.

Posted by: mlah at May 24, 2005 12:01 AM

Bill, OT, and also link-whorage. Check out the amusing "Beware of Coke!" story at Gates of Vienna. It's right up your alley...

Posted by: Baron Bodissey at May 24, 2005 07:00 AM

Why is it that people are willing to believe that Bush is a crook, when there is no evidence of it, and yet they'll applaud Galloway for lecturing OUR senate, despite the fact that he's taken money from Hussein's Regime?

Wait, I already know the answer--because Bush is a Republican, and Republicans are evil and not to be trusted.

It's a good thing that liberals don't have any prejudice.

Posted by: Adam Gurri at May 24, 2005 11:45 AM