Posted by
J.P. Farris on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 8:41:13 PM
What is the future of journalism? Bloggers have become the modern day media watchdogs and have lately uncovered media bias, inconsistencies, sensationalism and falsehoods in the way the media has been covering things in the Middle East. I myself go to more than one single news site in order to get the whole picture. I have also learned that if I want to get more to the story than the media covers I go directly to the blogosphere.
The term blogosphere was first coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham as a joke and was was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick who took it quite seriously. Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. Other terms in use include Blogtopia, Blogspace, Blogiverse, and Blogistan.{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere}
Bloggers and Journalists form a blogging biosphere that has become an ecosystem in its own right, an ecosystem that one savvy blogger has dubbed the Blogosphere. The word was meant as a clever pun combining "Blog" with "logos", a Greek word meaning logic and reason. And while bloggers do often use logic in dissecting arguments, I love the word Blogosphere because it happens to capture another truth: the Blogosphere is a biosphere of its own, a Media Ecosystem that lives and breathes just like any other biological system.{http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/blogosphere.htm}
It was bloggers that raised questions about what really happened at Qana, causing the IDF to look into it further. It was bloggers that pointed out doctored photos and inconsistencies in coverage.
The story keeps developing. More photos have been uncovered as fakes. More importantly, it looks like dozens of photos were also staged.
Another photo by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj has been shown to be doctored. The photo, which proports to be of an Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational.{http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php}
Another doctored photo?
{http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html}
Here is a question about more photos from Adnan Hajj of Reuters.
{http://ace.mu.nu/archives/189537.php}
And still more questionable photos:
{http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2006/08/beirut_redux.html}
{http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/189683.php}
Here is another fake photo:
{http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014919.php}
The news agency Reuters has withdrawn from sale 920 pictures taken by a photographer after finding he had doctored two images taken in Lebanon.{http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5254838.stm}
Are there any more questions about media coverage and bias on the war? Bloggers have their eyes and ears open.
The Israeli military dropped leaflets Tuesday over the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, warning of stepped-up operations and urging people not to drive on roads.
One leaflet, which a Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. reporter showed on the air, said that "terrorist elements ... are using you as human shields by launching rockets toward the state of Israel from your homes."
The translated leaflet continued, "All cars and of any type will be shelled if seen moving south of the Litani River because it will be considered a suspect of transferring rockets, military ammunitions and those causing destruction.
"You need to know that anyone moving in any type of car will put their life in danger."
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been exempted from the Israeli targeting, said Roland Hueguenin-Benjamin, a spokesman for the group. He said the Red Cross has negotiated "freedom of movement" for its convoys, which have been providing aid to people in the region.
The area has been a launching point for Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets, about 40 of which had landed by midday Tuesday in Israel, an Israeli police spokesman said.
As combat between Israel and Hezbollah continued unabated Tuesday, diplomats heightened their efforts to end the 28 days of fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert termed "interesting" a Lebanese proposal to send 15,000 troops to its southern border, The Associated Press reported.{http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/08/mideast.main/index.html}
Lebanon's government agreed to dispatch 15,000 troops to its southern border as part of a peace agreement if Israeli troops leave the country, a government spokesman said late Monday.
Lebanon's proposed changes would have Israeli troops hand over their current positions to the U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon as they withdraw. UNIFIL would then give control to Lebanese forces.{http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/mideast.main/index.html/}
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert termed the Lebanese decision to move its army southward an "interesting" one that needs to be considered carefully.
At a press conference after a meeting with President Moshe Katsav, Olmert said that since the beginning of the military operation Israel has said its goals were the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the deployment of the Lebanese army on the border with Israel, and the dismantling of Hizbullah.
Olmert said Israel must carefully weigh to what extent this deployment is practical. There is some concern in Jerusalem that the Lebanese announcement is a ploy to get the IDF to withdraw, while forestalling the deployment of a significant multinational force that would keep Hizbullah from redeploying in the south.{http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1154525830875}
But will more UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire mean anything?
In March of 1978 Resolution 425 established a “United Nations interim force for Southern Lebanon” aimed at “restoring international peace and security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority . . . ”
The “force” - UNIFIL - is still on the scene, turning its usual blind eye to the flow of arms that has kept Hezbollah in business.
In September of 2004, Resolution 1559 demanded “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.”
Well that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Day after day TV journalists have captured on film the arsenals of Hezbollah rockets stashed in bunkers and in backyard gardens in areas abandoned by the terrorists as some flee north. The arsenals were built, sustained and deployed even as a hapless Lebanese military and their U.N. enablers stood idly by.
Will the next “international force” go in and clean out the nests of these terrorists? If they can not or will not, then this resolution - like those that preceded it - will be an exercise in futility.
As our own nation approaches the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we ought to be mindful that terrorists respect neither borders nor human life. They respect only a level of strength adequate to halt their own murderous mission. If the United Nations isn’t prepared to show that kind of strength and resolve, it ought to stop the dithering and say so now.{http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=151815}
Meanwhile Hezbollah is still fighting, terrorizing Northern Israel with its rockets and showing itself strong.
Operation Change of Direction was launched last month with the declared goal of weakening Hizbullah to the point where it would be possible to create a new political reality in south Lebanon. On Monday, almost four weeks into the fighting, a high-ranking Military Intelligence officer said the IDF was still far from reaching its goal.
While Israel waited for a United Nations Security Council resolution on a cease-fire, not now expected to come up for a vote until at least Thursday, the next stage will be a second resolution - one that calls for the deployment of a multinational force to replace the IDF in southern Lebanon and to prevent Hizbullah from reestablishing itself there.
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, have spoken with enthusiasm about a multinational force, but the high-ranking officer said Monday that Hizbullah had not been damaged enough and still retained enough "diplomatic power" to thwart the deployment of such a force.
"Hizbullah has not been sufficiently weakened," the officer said. "And there may be no choice but to expand the ground operation in the direction of the Litani River to achieve that goal."
According to intelligence information, the Hizbullah command-and-control array is still functioning even after nearly four weeks of fighting. So are the logistical command centers - still operating and succeeding in directing the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon from Syria.
The officer said that Hizbullah still had the ability to fire short-range rockets, of which the guerrilla group has already fired 2,500 since the beginning of the war.
The only way to stop the short-range rockets, he said, was for the IDF to deepen its incursion north to the Litani and to sweep through cities like Tyre, estimated to be the hiding place for most of the short-range 122mm Katyusha rockets.{http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1154525826349}
Hezbollah hides among civilian and attacks Israel with rockets fired from nonmilitary areas, using innocent people as human shields. Their tactics leave Israel with an ethical dilemma, a dilemma that Hezbollah terrorists don’t seem to share.
Almost four weeks into the war, Hizbullah mocks Israel's inability to staunch the fire. The Arab world, part of which essentially backed Israel's anti-Hizbullah offensive in its early stages, has withdrawn or, in many cases, thrown its weight publicly behind the terrorists amid daily evidence of Israel's failure to decisively prevail. In America, analysts question Washington's over-reliance on Israel, the little strategic ally that couldn't.
But Israel could prevail in this conflict. Israel could silence the Katyusha launchers. What it would need do is resort to one of those two options - a much greater use of air power or a larger ground offensive.
Either of those avenues, however, would necessarily involve death on a far larger scale than we have seen thus far. Pulverizing air power would likely create Lebanese civilian casualties of a number that would dwarf the toll to date. Wider use of ground forces, on Hizbullah's home territory, would likely dwarf the IDF toll hitherto sustained in the close-quarters fighting.
With every day's evidence of underwhelming military success, the chorus swells in Israel that this is a no-brainer. The army is being humiliated, the argument runs; Israel's critical deterrent capability is being shattered. Israel simply must ratchet up its military response to the daily rain of incoming rockets. And while some experts favor the ground-forces option, for others the choice is no choice at all: Dead Lebanese or dead Israelis? Why the hesitation?
And yet Israel hesitates. It certainly does not want to put more of its ground forces into harm's way. But it also does not want to inflict civilian casualties on a more drastic scale in Lebanon.
This is partly because of a sense of short-term gain and long-term loss. A much more forceful use of air power might indeed shatter Hizbullah's Katyusha capability and bring a respite to the North. But it also might leave Israel friendless internationally, and thus utterly vulnerable.
Without America in its corner, Israel is in real, existential trouble. And an Israel deemed to be causing unconscionable civilian casualties in this region, and by extension destroying what is left of its American ally's power and influence in the Middle East, would risk dramatically undermining the "special relationship" with Washington.{http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1154525826321}
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reminded the panel that the United States and the free world are in a "global struggle against violent extremists." Although he was talking about the war in Iraq what he said could be applied to what is going on between Israel and Hezbollah.
Rumsfeld elaborated on the difference between the two sides: "One side does all it can to avoid civilian casualties, while the other side uses civilians as shields, and then skillfully orchestrates a public outcry when the other side accidentally kills civilians in their midst. One side is held to exacting standards of near perfection; the other side is held to no standards and no accountability at all."
Rumsfeld noted how the enemy uses our media to undermine American resolve, "planning attacks to gain the maximum media coverage and the maximum public outcry." And then, most importantly, he said: "If we left Iraq prematurely - as the terrorists demand - the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us - and all those who don't share their militant ideology - to leave what they call occupied Muslim lands, from Spain to the Philippines, and then we would face not only the evil ideology of these violent extremists, but an enemy that will have grown accustomed to succeeding in telling free people everywhere what to do." {http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2006/08/08/rumsfeld_is_right}
Back in the US there is another issue that many would not be considered linked to the “war on terror” going on in the Middle East. That issue is illegal immigration, something the President spoke about last week in South Texas.
Almost half of the illegal aliens arriving in the U.S. from terrorist-sponsoring or "special interest" nations in the past few years have been released into the American population following their apprehension. This key finding is published in an internal audit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by Cybercast News Service .
The so-called "catch and release" policies have allowed more than 45,000 illegal aliens from countries that are well known for their anti-American views or considered "hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism" to be freed.
U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), in conversations with sheriffs operating along the Texas-Mexico border, learned that illegal aliens of Middle Eastern descent have been able to blend into the culture south of the U.S. border and pass themselves off as Mexicans.
"They learn Spanish and assimilate into the population," Poe said. "Coming across the Canadian border they would be more conspicuous."{http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200608/SPE20060808a.html}
Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.
Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are six countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
There is still such a thing as journalistic integrity. There is still such a thing as accuracy and accountability in journalism. But alas…sometimes the media, in an effort to get the story, doesn’t check all the facts. That’s why it’s necessary to go to more than one source for the whole story. Sometimes their can be mistakes or bias in a story…and sometimes things can be doctored to paint a sensationalized picture, but the blogging watchdogs have their eyes and ears open to clear-up the fallacies.