Staged Shots from Lebanon? Please comment...

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html

This link was provided in another post but I thought it deserved a thread of its own. It shows an unidentified man apparently staging for the cameras a photo which essentially uses dead children as props......first of all I am appauled by the behaviour on both sides of this conflict--my father was Jewish and I find the actions of the Israeli/USA especially hard to stomach. But having said that, this kind of staged events, if it has happened, is not acceptable and it calls into account many of the pictures I have already seen from Lebanon. Can we assume that the photographers know this is going on? What do you think of this?
The photos looked like pretty compelling evidence to me. The same man is in every situation, right upfront.....and the situations are all completely different.
by Andy Levin Mon Aug 07 23:09:18 UTC 2006 (ed. 13-08-06) | new orleans, United States |

I've been wondering too - Reuters and AP certainly haven't be too vehement in denying or accepting anything. They've been rather silent, and now with the Adnan Hajj case it looks like the good work of photographers is coming under assault from those weirdo blog folks, and yet nobody out there has offered any comments as to what is happening. As for photographers, we all know the realities of what's happening when you're in the field and are the only ones who can comment.

I don't know if some of these pics are staged or not, I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Propaganda is nothing new, I'm a little concerned over the silence from fellow photographers. Granted, I'm sure the last thing they want to do is justify their actions to some crazy blog, but what about the editors or agency heads or anybody representing the work of the photographer's?

It also seems that with over saturation of our brains from words and pictures, that the rush to be the first is jeopardizing factual and well reported journalism. Being on a constant and ever demanding deadline has to create stress and tension in trying to get something, anything, and breaking news has a mentality to follow the leader, to go where everyone else lest you don't get the picture, or are second to hit the wire. It seems with more coverage comes less standards, we aree in a frantic race to beat each other out, regardless of what we're actually taking a picture of.

However, I'm skeptical of the conspiracy theorist bloggers, who just seem completely out of whack, and are almost McCarthy-ite in their witch hunting of so-called media bias. Trutrh gets distorted, heresy, innuendo, speculation and gossip are what carry the stories, slanted with racist taunting from their Neanderthal readership, slinging mud at each other is a race and battle to point out that the OTHER side is evil. Reading some of these stupid blogs made me sick - no wonder I never read them, absolutely mind-numbing, reckless, stupid trashing of wehatever is the opposite of what they believe. Which is why somebody who represents the photographers being slashed about should make a stand and either own up to the fact that Hezbollah tells us where to go or the Israeli's or whomever, and that well, you know, a missle was flying by my head and i didn't have time to ask myself if the green helmeted guy was here yesterday or not.

But what about embedding, is this not the same instance in trying to control what is seen and heard through the media distilled to those larger masses, namely us, the reader? And really, where could you roam around freely during a war and expect to get good coverage and be ablle to tell the story you thought was the story, and not someone else's agenda? Maybe Vietnam.

Anyways, it's almost like Princess Di all over again! Our reputations are being soiled! It almost feels dirty to say "I'm a Photojournalist", I'm worried some crazed blogger may run me down on his scooter or something.

I pulled this off of the Don McCullin story that someone else posted on LS. It's a fascinating read, ".... So when I operate alone I try to approach them with dignity. But there is no way of being dignified with dozens of newsmen around, pushing and shoving and punching each other over one injured soldier, shouting to another : "you spoilt my picture", while almost depriving the man from the oxygen around him. I look at them and think : "Who are these people ?" At night, in Beirut, they used to meet at the bar, talking about day-rates. Or someone would say to another one : "If you get the cover, you buy us champagne"......."

Here's a link to the story...