Skip to main content

No, it's not the real news.....

The "news" will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has read beyond the headlines in the media - the media has not accurately portrayed either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. So concludes Project Censored, as reported on truthout.com:

"The papers, the corporate media are not giving their readers a full understanding through this powerful visual medium of the real cost of the war."
- Andrew Roth

In an interview with Truthout's Geoffrey Millard, Assistant Professor Andrew Roth discussed his recent study of pictures that appear on the front pages of major newspapers and their portrayal of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.

In "Covering War's Victims: A Content Analysis of Iraq and Afghanistan War Photographs in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle," Roth and his colleagues Zoe Huffman, Jeff Huling, Kevin Stolle and Jocelyn Thomas detail the importance of visual media - specifically photographs - in newspapers. Their study examines the sociological importance of war photography and the use of photographs to spur awareness of the human cost of war.

The study Roth conducted examined and cataloged the front page photos of The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle during the first year of the war in Iraq and the most recent year, in order to assess coverage of the wars by corporate media.

Roth found that only 12.8 percent of the photos they analyzed "related in some way" to the wars. A fraction of the war-related pictures - 3.3 percent - represented "dead, injured or missing humans."

Based on their analysis, Roth and his colleagues conclude that the media have served to distort the reality of the ongoing wars by covering up the loss of life and misery of civilians and of those involved in the fighting.

The full report can be read in the latest edition of "Censored 2008", the annual publication of the media research group Project Censored."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig