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The sky calls to us ...
Super Moderator
Location: CT
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Quote:
Originally posted by filtherton
Here's another perspective on the cheering palestinians:
http://www.labournet.net/world/0109/cnn1.html
Celebrating Palestinians: CNN scene was actually staged
Report by Rania Masri
Published: 27/09/01
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Really? I think that most people would agree that Snopes is the source to trust on this kind of stuff.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm
Quote:
with many distortions, including a falsified by-line article from the student. He affirms that a hacker attacked his domain. Several E-mails have been sent on his behalf and those dating from 15.09.2001 should be ignored.
Among the distortions is the fact that UNICAMP would be analyzing the tape, which is absolutely false. The administration considers this alert definitive and will be careful to avoid new rumors.
Certainly CNN wasn't the only news organization to report on the reaction of some Palestinians to the events of September 11, as other outlets such as Reuters and the Los Angeles Times carried the same story. Also, other news outlets such as and The Jerusalem Post reported that journalists were threatened for capturing images of Palestinian celebrations, making real footage of the event harder to obtain:
Palestinian Authority actions to confiscate film footage of Palestinians celebrating the terror attacks on the US were logical to prevent the media from painting the wrong picture of Palestinian sentiment, Bassam Abu Sharif, an adviser to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.
"This was a normal preventive act . . . we don't want to give more to the Zionist propaganda which portrays all Palestinians as terrorists," he said. "The idea is that these people were not allowed to film, because a small group of people on film would represent the Palestinian people as a whole."
The footage was real. It's a shame, in fact, that its provenance was doubted because the lives of journalists who have attempted to capture similar acts on video have been threatened. That this tape made it out at all is a miracle. But CNN's reputation was besmirched by a single person, a Brazilian student who reported (without verification) that the footage in question actually came from a 1991 report on "Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait," a copy of which was in the possession of one of his teachers. (Actually, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq took place in 1990, and it's unlikely anyone captured images of Palestinians "celebrating" that event. If CNN had used similar footage, it probably came from the Palestinian reaction to Iraq's launching of missiles at Israel during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.)
Subsequent rumors that the "Israeli Defense Agency" sent a film crew to hand out candy to Palestinians in order to induce them into staging a "celebration" for the cameras appear to be equally unfounded. However, this issue does emphasize a point that appears to have been overlooked in the debate over whether video was re-used from a previous year or not: that images themselves are not the whole story. A news report can be accompanied by stock footage and still be fair and accurate, but a news report accompanied by current footage is not necessarily either fair or accurate. A simple news clip doesn't always provide us with enough context to discern what the people depicted in it are reacting to, why they're reacting the way they are, or whether their actions are representative of a large group of people or a very small one, as an Italian journalist in Beirut reported:
Trying to find our bearings, my husband and I went into an American-style cafe in the Hamra district, near Rue Verdun, rated as one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world. Here the cognitive dissonance was immediate, and direct. The café's sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked, or moved. They were excited, very excited.
An hour later, at a little market near the U.S. Embassy, on the outskirts of Beirut, a thrilled shop assistant showed us, using his hands, how the plane had crashed into the twin towers. He, too, was laughing.
Once back at the house where we were staying, we started scanning the international channels. Soon came reports of Palestinians celebrating. The BBC reporter in Jerusalem said it was only a tiny minority. Astonished, we asked some moderate Arabs if that was the case. "Nonsense," said one, speaking for many. "Ninety percent of the Arab world believes that Americans got what they deserved."
An exaggeration? Rather an understatement. A couple of days later, we headed north to Tripoli, near the Syrian border. On the way, we read that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who donated blood in front of the cameras, was rejecting any suggestion that his people were rejoicing over the terrorist attack. "It was less than 10 children in Jerusalem," he said.
Last updated: 23 September 2001
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I don't think I need to say much more. |