Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Altering photographs is nothing new, especially in this digital era. When applied to the news business, it is a Jason Blair-style crime along the lines of plagiarism and fabrication — maybe worse because altered images are sometimes difficult to detect and images are so powerful. The media watchdogs have largely failed in covering this issue of altered and staged photographs, and they are failing the public.
For those who are curious, I am hanging in there on our request for a correction in em>The Washington Post about that April story by correspondent Karl Vick. That was the one with the headline that said “In Turkey, a Deep Suspicion of Missionaries: Priest’s Killing Shows Complex Ties of Islam to Nationalism in Officially Secular State.”
As a rule, GetReligion limits itself to dissecting the work of mainstream journalists when they wrestle with news stories about religion. But, every now and then, you see a story in which your heart really goes out to the journalists who are trying to do this difficult job.
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There are, of course, huge differences in the two stories. Great Britain seems to be dealing with genuine terrorists bent on mass murder while the French rioters were less terrorists and more gangs intent on creating havoc, and not necessarily death, in their neighborhoods.
There is a rather interesting sort-of GetReligion piece in The Wall Street Journal today, only it isn’t written by one of us, and the author — that would be former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg — doesn’t really dig into the religion issues all that deeply. The piece is called “Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Neighborhood,” and it focused on that CBS interview Sunday night that pitted the aging lion Mike Wallace against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I read more gossip sites by 9 a.m. than most people read all day. So forgive me if I’m still stuck on the Mel Gibson story. Today’s entry comes from Alan Cooperman at The Washington Post. I don’t think the story is terribly important or hard-hitting but I do think it’s worth noting.
Once upon a time, news stories used to break at the local level and then, gradually, work their way up the news food chain through the wire services until they reached, or failed to reach, the national newspapers and networks.
