Rewarded for Spreading Terrorist Propaganda

Just when you thought the self absorbed media could not sink any lower...

First they give Pulitzers to "journalists" that publish classified national security info. Now they are rewarding photographers for their snaps of terrorist propaganda. Yes the AP has given a $500 reward to the photographers of the Qana devastation. From an internal AP email... (Chickenhawk Salute to Little Green Footballs)...

Last Sunday proved to be one of the most dramatic days in the war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. AP’s extensive photo team produced a stunning series of images that day that beat the competition and scored huge play worldwide.

Nasser’s most haunting image showed a man emerging from the rubble carrying the lifeless and dust-covered body of a child. Calm, morning light shone down on man and child, highlighting them against an almost monochrome background of pure rubble. ... Nasser’s image ran on the front pages of at least 33 newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Post. It also won a double-page center spread in The Guardian of London

For a day of outstanding and memorable photos, taken in conditions of substantial danger, the Lebanon photo team of Nasser Nasser, Lefteris Pitarakis, Kevin Frayer, Mohammed Zaatari, Ben Curtis, Hussein Malla, Kevork Djansezian and Dalia Khamissy shares this week’s $500 Beat of the Week award.

A day when children are paraded around as trophies constitutes a "day of outstanding & memorable photos". Forget the deaths and the possibility of terrorist complicity - the AP beat the competition to the punch. Not to mention the artistic way they describe Mr. Green Helmet holding the body of a dead infant. You would think it was a Michaelangelo moment... Sniff, Sniff - I smell another Pulitzer for the AP photographers (remember their award winning photo of the Iraqi election working getting murdered in the street).

Oh but that wasn't the only News from the News today... The AP, AFP and Reuters are outraged, I tell you outraged, at the implication that the photos were staged. Here's what the AP's Kathleen Carroll had to say about the claims... (from my new favorite blog, EU Referendum)

Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor, puts the boot in. "It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy," she says.

But Carroll was okay with reporters doing just that in Iraq while defending the AP's lack of journalistic integrity that I exposed in August 2005...

Kathleen Carroll, the AP’s Executive Editor, actually said that “it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built.”

MEANWHILE... The media has failed to report what their cameras picked up a week or so ago in Lebanon. While NBC's Richard Engel was reporting on Israel bombing Lebanon's financial district, the camera man was panning around the destruction. What popped up in the frame? Why nothing more than sheets of UNCUT US 100 dollar bills. Even Brian Williams missed it (as if that is any surprise). Wonder how THAT got there? Now don't be so quick to point your finger at the terrorists - that could be called "profiling".

You can see the video for yourself here.