December 04, 2006

Majdi Mohammed: AP Photog or Anti-Israeli Propagandist?

Cross-posted at Mein Blogovault. (Note: Some of the links require a Control-F search to find Majdi's photos. Simply type "majdi" into the field and search.)

It is increasingly difficult to distinguish between objective news sources, reporters and photographers and propagandists with clear agendas in the wire services. I was struck yesterday by a photograph of a Palestinian youth who was killed by Israeli soldiers after throwing rocks at them while they were dismantling a barricade in the West Bank.

As a practical matter, I can understand why these 'stringers' are not investigated or vetted. There are so many of them, all seemingly with cameras ready to shoot at the slightest sign of "Israeli/Western aggression," or more commonly, "Arab angst/grief." They get lost in the daily shuffle of news proliferation. The AP is a monopolistic organization that thinks so few people are noticing these kinds of "stringers" that it makes no difference what their critics think.

Unfortunately for them (and ultimately us), looking into wire stringers like Adnan Hajj and non-existant sources like 'Iraqi Police Captain' Jamil Hussein has given sufficient cause for concern that the wire services (and by proxy, our mainstream outlets) are crawling with agenda-oriented activists masquerading as journalists. Qais al-Bashir. Bassem Mroue. Sami Moubayeb. Majdi Mohammed. The Centcom list of fakes and insurgent propagandists. It goes on and on in the fog of the information war.

Keeping this in mind, a few of the Majdi Mohammed's photos seemed reminiscent of techniques seen in Pallywood productions, and still more seemed a little too close to terrorists and gunmen to be coming from a reporter who was truly being objective.

I had a bad feeling that Googling the images of Majdi Mohammed would reveal more photos verifying this gestalt. To my dismay, I was right.

Mohammed has an archive of AP photos that have run in numerous publications (news, activist and otherwise) around the world for several years covering the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that, for some odd reason, always seems to photograph the Palestinians dead, bleeding, dying, crying, "resisting," training foot soldiers or in riot mode. In other words, from a decidedly Palestinian perspective.

Israeli photos? A burning Israeli jeep, an Israeli bulldozer, and nothing. Plenty of balance there, no? More below the jump.

Some more visual examples, if the links aren't working (they all should be, though):

This is the kind of content that gets lost and ignored by the mainstream press in the fog of the information wars. And they want it that way - there is so much information flying around the world so quickly that people who don't know any better or aren't wise to the media's nature get spun and respun on a daily basis.

The only counter-balance at the moment is the conservative blogosphere, which has done yoeman's work questioning, highlighting and neutralizing this polarizing and intentionally slanted coverage that has blanketed the Earth for the past few years. Without the right-o-sphere, Adnan Hajj would still be working. Dan Rather would still be relevant. Chris Matthews would be "credible." Bilal Hussein would be a media martyr instead of being exposed as an AP terrorist shill. Same with all of the aforementioned ME propagandists.

When it comes to these heated conflicts in the Middle East, the right-o-sphere is watching closely and is becoming increasingly dismayed by what we're finding under these MSM rocks.

Although the hill is a steep one, it is important to stay vigilant, ask tough questions and to pile up that evidence. The MSM isn't going to do it for us, and though they may try, they can't ignore it when its there right in front of them.