Slandering Soldiers

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May 15, 2004 -- The editor of the London Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, was fired yesterday after being forced to admit that pictures the paper published of British troops allegedly abusing Iraqi prisoners were, in fact, a hoax.
The paper had bought the photographs, which apparently showed unidentified British soldiers beating up and urinating on Iraqi prisoners, from two men claiming also to be soldiers.

They were extremely obvious fakes.

As soon as they were printed, readers and members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment - the unit whose troops were supposedly involved in the "atrocities" - pointed out the abundant evidence that they were phony.

For the nearly two weeks Piers Morgan was insisting they were genuine, the photographs provoked fury in the Arab world (and a deputy of Shi'ite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to hold captured British servicewomen in sexual slavery in response).

Of course, the Daily Mirror under Morgan was a fount of hysterical anti-Americanism and anti-Iraq war-reporting. At one point, it ran a front-page column - under a picture of Prime Minister Tony Blair with bloodied hands - asserting that "the current American elite is the Third Reich of our times."

And it's clear that the paper's political agenda was behind its propagation of the hoax - though the editors knew perfectly well that the publication of these dubious photographs endangered the safety of Coalition soldiers in Iraq.

There's a lot of this sort of thing going on in this country, too, where the desire of top editors at left-leaning papers to present the Bush administration, and the war in Iraq, in the worst possible light is abundantly evident.

Take The Boston Globe's slander of U.S. troops, published on Wednesday.

The Globe, which is owned by The New York Times, ran a graphic reproduction of fraudulent photographs of GIs gang-raping Iraqi women - images that actually came from a pornographic Web site called "sex in war."

The photographs illustrated an article about a Boston city councilman's press conference denouncing U.S. troops, and were supplied by a member of the crackpot Nation of Islam.

The Globe has since run a brief correction and an ombudsman's note.

The ombudsman - more concerned about the graphic nature of the photos than the fact that the paper eagerly published total fabrications - admits that "if the Globe had followed its procedures, which include a wide review of photos that are of a sensitive nature, this would not have happened."

So why weren't normal procedures followed in this particular case?

Maybe "wide review[s] of photos" don't happen at the Globe when a story advances the editors' political agenda.

Interestingly, both the Globe and its parent paper, the Times, have shrilly demanded the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, alleging all manner of transgressions - the Abu Ghraib affair among them.

Yet the paper was quick to say "no one will be fired" over this - nor, apparently, even punished.

Bottom line: The Globe and the Times - self-designated paragons of journalistic virtue in America - won't hold their editors and staff to the same level of accountability they demand of the secretary of Defense in time of war.

Or anything close to it.

Damned hypocrites.

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Do you expect the press to admit they screwed up.
They have been successful in stirring up hatred,and in endangering lives.Thats exactly what they wanted to do.So why should they apologize?

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It will be interesting to see how many of the 'thousands' of photos taken at Abu Ghraib are in fact fakes. I think there is already sufficient evidence that abuses did happen however.

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Foxfyre wrote:

It will be interesting to see how many of the 'thousands' of photos taken at Abu Ghraib are in fact fakes. I think there is already sufficient evidence that abuses did happen however.

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I think it's much more likely that these newspapers were chasing "exclusives" and trying to break stories. That there is a very real problem with very real photos documenting it, and some of these other organizations, rather than just printing the same old images and analysis as everyone else, wanted their own piece of the pie.

This is of course disgraceful. But I don't think it has a lot to do with the veracity of the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

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Rather upsetting, that.

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Absolutely nobody is saying the abuses didnt happen at Abu Ghraib.

But,if it turns out that even one photo is fake,one would have to wonder about the rest.

By admitting that they made up photo's and facts to make their case,doesnt that cast doubt on the veracity of anything else they have calimed? It does in my eyes.

May I ask you what you meant by your first statement when you turned around and disclaimed it with your following statements?

It reminds me of an episode of seinfeld where this lady thought George and Jerry were gay. They said, "no, no we are not gay, not at all, not that there is anything wrong with that, but we are not gay." Kind of like protesting too much and the disclaimer of "not that there is anything wrong with that" fell flat in the way it was supposed to being a comedy.

Likewise, your first statement of not doubting the abuse stories falls flat with your following statements of doubting the veracity of anything else they have claimed.

Why can't people just call a spade a spade around here?

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McG

If there is any contribution I might make to your reading habits it would be to encourage you to foresake publications like the NY Post. It represents 'journalism' at its worst. There are right wing publications I commonly disagree with (WSJ or Buckley's National Review, say) but at least they give a damn about facts and reasoning.

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They were extremely obvious fakes.

That's a false statement. If you go to BBC or the Guardian, you'll get some better data on the detail necessary in establishing the photos to be questionable, and likely fakes.

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For the nearly two weeks Piers Morgan was insisting they were genuine, the photographs provoked fury in the Arab world (and a deputy of Shi'ite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to hold captured British servicewomen in sexual slavery in response).

This is disingenuous. The evidence of Brit complicity in violations is not restricted to this one case.

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And it's clear that the paper's political agenda was behind its propagation of the hoax - though the editors knew perfectly well that the publication of these dubious photographs endangered the safety of Coalition soldiers in Iraq.

As to agenda, the NY Post is a paradigm case of a paper driven by just that. The 'don't print photos as it endangers troops' is a bad argument for all the reasons we've discussed elsewhere.

The Globe and the NY Times both carry regular columnists who speak from the right. I don't know if you read either paper on a regular basis, or with any thoroughness, but neither carry the sort of extreme or singular viewpoint you suggest. If you analyze, with some set of objective criteria, such as carefulness and multiplicity of view, either publication against the NY Post, the Post will not end up looking very good.

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Blatham

Bravo---you have once again excelled yourself with your careful documented profiles of various news organizations who possess some or all of your criteria for jounalistic merit-----yep you have completely covered with smoke the original point that most liberal publications are quite anxious to slander the soldiers of either America or Britain no matter what the cost in lives or reputations.

Good job----your Canadian friends must be very proud of you.

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Slander?

This is a big story. What is the media supposed to do about it? Ignore it?

"Slander"slan·der ( P ) Pronunciation Key (slndr)
n.
Law. Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person's reputation.
A false and malicious statement or report about someone.

Are the reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib false?

It's got sex and violence and a credible claim to international import. Of course it is being reported on hither and yon. That doesn't make it false, or slanderous.

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perc

In some cabinet about the house, you'll probably find a Midol. Use only as recommended.

What might consitute worthy or valuable journalistic standards is good question, and one which we probably ought to think about more often.

As to 'anxious to slander the soldiers'...there's little I think I would disagree more with you about. Slander, of course, has a specific definition, but I know what you mean...speak badly about. And yet I don't think you'll find that anywhere, other than in something off the web and very nutty extremo.

What you will find is criticism of the project of Iraq. The military is the agent of that project, thus it appears the subject of the criticism, but that's really a misreading.

Nobody is proud of me. At my father's funeral, as dad's casket rolled towards the crematorium fire, I realized my family had tied my shoelaces to a casket handle.

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I'll quote our favourite trailer-trash soldier-girl, Ms England:

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"We thought it looked funny, so pictures were taken"

When a few pictures turn up in a foreign media source, it's right to question them. When there are thousands in the hands and hard-drives (and as screen-savers) of US servicemen and women on the ground in Iraq, you can draw a very clear conclusion that they are for real. When pea-brained thugs tell you that:

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Pointing to a photograph of detainees stacked naked in different positions, she said: "Picture 000015 was basically us fooling around."

Of picture 000019, which shows her pointing at a detainee masturbating, she explained: "Staff Sergeant Frederick had removed the bags from the detainee's head and motioned for them to masturbate themselves. The detainee I'm pointing at didn't stop, so we took a picture of it."

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blatham wrote:

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They were extremely obvious fakes.
That's a false statement. If you go to BBC or the Guardian, you'll get some better data on the detail necessary in establishing the photos to be questionable, and likely fakes.

This is not what I heard. There was a military vehicle in one of the pictures, and it was recognized right away that the Brits didn't take any of those vehicles to Iraq because of the difficulty of finding fuel for them. So for anyone who knew anything about military matters, "extremely obvious fakes" is a good description of those pictures.

blatham wrote:

Quote:
And it's clear that the paper's political agenda was behind its propagation of the hoax - though the editors knew perfectly well that the publication of these dubious photographs endangered the safety of Coalition soldiers in Iraq.

As to agenda, the NY Post is a paradigm case of a paper driven by just that. The 'don't print photos as it endangers troops' is a bad argument for all the reasons we've discussed elsewhere.

"Don't print hoax photos" is a good idea for any paper. No true news organization should have a political agenda, but I'm not sure such an animal as a true news organization exists on the planet. Everyone has an agenda. I think the Post is correct to point out that printing fake pictures of British abuse of prisoners endangers British troops. We certainly don't need another Nick Berg video with a Brit as the guest of honor.

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This is not what I heard. There was a military vehicle in one of the pictures, and it was recognized right away that the Brits didn't take any of those vehicles to Iraq because of the difficulty of finding fuel for them. So for anyone who knew anything about military matters, "extremely obvious fakes" is a good description of those pictures.

McG
As you can see below from the Telegraph piece, it took police two weeks to establish that the photo was fake, and that they had to identify the truck as being in England through matching scratches etc.

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Mr Ingram told MPs that a two-week investigation by the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch concluded definitely that they were fake and it had independent corroboration that they were not taken in Iraq...The military police identified the lorry from marks, such as tears and smears, but officials said it would not be produced yet because of the possibility that it would be used in criminal proceedings.

And sure, no paper ought to print false photos, or facts for that matter. But the claims made by the writer in the piece you've quoted are more immediately evident as false than were the photos in question. One soldier has now been arrested in the matter, and more information is likely to come out. But let's acknowledge that it's highly unlikely that the Mirror would have printed the photos had they not known they were false (out of self preservation, if nothing else) and that other similar instances of Brit forces complicity in such acts were already known.

It's not the messenger at fault here. It's the acts done.

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Come one folks, slander is a two-way street. How nice would it be to have a boulevard instead.

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In situations like this, it is very possible that both the acts and the messenger are both wrong. Hypothetically, newspapers exist to inform and educate. In reality, they often exist to sell themselves. Is printing pictures of prisoners being abused necessary even if the source is verified and confirmed? It's naive to suppose that ethics and government might be intertwined, but perhaps there is still hope for journalism.

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Welcome to a2k Solon (you've picked a personal hero for your name, by the way).

I hold with the traditional, if perhaps slightly romantic notion, that the proper function of a free press is to act as watchguard against whatever powers may be, and government is certainly one of them. The most egregious function of a 'free' press is to act as handmaiden to government through becoming an arm of their PR department.

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Slandering Soldiers

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