Hezbollywood - Behind the Scenes

EU Referendum has just finished their3 week effort to document the Hezbollah play reported in the world press as the "Massacre At Qana". It's here.

If you get the gist after the first few parts, skip ahead to "Part 7" aka "Caught In the Act", where my favorite actor, Mr. Green Helmet gets caught directing in front of the camera.

There's the APs first attempt at crushing the Mr. Green Helmet story, where AP Hack-In-Training described "Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours..."

And the second attempt to cleanse Mr. Green Helmut with this AP write-up on Salam Daher, saying he's a natural hero, who dug for hours to recover bodies.

Is it Abu Shadi Jradi or Salam Daher? How good can AP be on fact checking if they can't even get his name right. And if he's a resuce working, how come there are hundreds of pictures of Qana, hours of video, not one showing him digging. Scores of pictures showing him carrying bodies, with great emotion. Ok - sometimes taking detours over harsher / more picturesque terrain, sure. From one staging area to another, sure. But digging, nah.

Which leads us to Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive hack for Associated Press, says "that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described" (see this).

She also said "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," Guess it's fine to sit thousands of miles away and not actually review the arguments, or use your brain, but you can say that nothing hokey happened a degree of accuracy.

From the photo evidence on the web, these were not unstaged events, with the media critically recording what was going on. It was choreographed, scripted, with each news organization given time to get their shots, with clear lines of sight. Over and over.

But really, go take a look at EU Refererndum. It's got much more info, and I'm just summarizing what they said.