Reuters TV Photo Well, as you can see there
was quite a crowd gathered. Practically standing room only. See all
the cameramen? I count three that are clearly holding cameras out
of....say 25. "Crowd up close, folks, we got a lot of pavement showing!"
So that stopped being fun and besides the light
began to fade in the late afternoon. The prospect of a long and
arduous nighttime project that would push beyond prime time news persuaded
the US military to switch to plan B. But first....
...they just happened to have the flag that was
flying over the Pentagon on September 11, 2001... you know they carry
around stuff like that just in case of such a photo-op. Gotta tie
some loose ends together. You, know.... this thing about consorting
with terrorists. This drew a huge crowd of on-lookers, Ma, Pa, and the
kids on an afternoon stroll in wartime Baghdad.
Then the US troops cranked up this big rig and
hooked up to lend a liberator's hand in the downfall of a hated dictator.
The photo at the top of the page shows what the plaza looked like from the
Palestine Hotel nearby looking down on the news charade.
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Did iconic images from Baghdad
reveal more about the media than Iraq?
By Matthew Gilbert and Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff,
4/10/2003
''It's classic for TV reporting to gravitate toward iconic images,''
says Barbie Zelizer, author of ''Journalism After September 11'' and
professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. ''Images
are more appealing than an interview with a man on the street. When we
hear words, we are skeptical and situate ourselves against them as we
decide what we agree with and what we don't. Images are simple and
memorable. They work in ways that don't engage the intellect. . . . We are
able to come to the core of the event much more readily with images than
we can with words.''
Indeed, a few miles away from yesterday's fallen statue, the message
was more complex, and less happy. Gunfire still rang out elsewhere in
Baghdad, a clear indication the statue revelers were only a part of the
picture. And what media and government officials were calling
''jubilation'' in Firdos Square looked an awful lot like the looting
taking place nearby. Footage of both activities showed gatherings verging
on anarchy.
Yesterday's coverage of the ''jubilation'' also had a self-conscious
and forced quality, as if the media were too eager to capture
''liberation'' for its daily news cycle. Whenever the cameras pulled back,
they revealed a relatively small crowd at the statue. And yet many news
anchors quickly shed their objectivity to celebrate the event. ''If you
don't have goose bumps now,'' gushed Fox News anchor David Asman, ''you
will never have them in your life.''
''It was the mother of all photo ops,'' says Norman Solomon, coauthor
of ''Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You.'' Solomon saw
yesterday's focus on the statue as an ''example of the tremendously
subjective character of the media coverage in this war. . . . What was
notable was how few Iraqis were there. It was almost like a lethargic pep
rally. There was scarcely a pompom in evidence. Despite the best of
efforts, it had a kind of low-budget staged quality as though a movie was
being shot but they couldn't get any extras.''
If TV's emphasis on the statue takedown was riveting for international
viewers, it must have been doubly powerful for those Iraqis who saw it.
Still uncertain about whether Hussein will return to power and accustomed
to one-sided coverage and propaganda, many of them must have interpreted
the event as a promise that he was gone for good.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns says the repetition of the footage
yesterday reminded him of the power of images to show us what we want to
see.
''When we repeat an image over and over again,'' he says, ''we're
forgetting all the other places we could also be looking at at that
moment. These images become justification, proof of what we want them to
become. That's the nature of iconic images.''
more...
U.S. troops toppling Saddam statue in Baghdad
Washington Post: Jubilant Iraqis Celebrate, Topple
Statue
CNN:
U.S troops topple Saddam statue
View of the historic propaganda
event from the Palestine Hotel ...thanks to the spoil sports who had
survived a tank attack on the designated journalist haven a few days
earlier.
"We are grateful to the
Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine
and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings
and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It
would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if
we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years.
But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a
world government. The supra-national sovereignty of an intellectual
elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national
auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
David Rockefeller
Bilderberger Conference, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
Gatekeepers of the Alternative Media
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to
the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's
DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the
WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on
David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE,
MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation
and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's
alternative media gatekeepers / censors.
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