December 25, 2004

Sicker Even Than We Thought

Powerline confirms that Wretchard was right about AP's complicity with the Iraqi murderers, to get a couple of dramatic pictures. Now Wretchard asks:
In this regard, one hopes it is not impertinent to ask whether a photographer who does not "swear allegiance or otherwise join up philosophically with them (insurgents)" can take their pictures. Mr. Stokes might like to state whether the Associated Press photographer who took a sequence of pictures of an execution on Haifa Street, Baghdad is one of these "brave Iraqi photographers" to whom the insurgents are willing to entrust their stories. If so, at what point did the "brave Iraqi" photographer become aware that the story of the day was going to be the live execution of two Iraqi election workers?

What would be the legal and moral status of a reporter who went to the Ford Theater on a tip from John Wilkes Booth that something important was going to happen there? Or to Pearl Harbor on a tip from a Japanese diplomat that there would be fireworks there? Why is this tipoff different? Booth and Tojo wanted their stories told, too.

Mainstream journalism is very sick, indeed. More so than we thought.


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