Thursday, January 14, 2010

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Ah... but which words? And if you can chose them arbitrarily, how valuable can the picture really be?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is being described as a thought experiment, I prefer to call it jerking off.

Anonymous said...

I also read part 1 of the Errol Morris musings. As the Hamas-TV-Mickey-Mouse-Imitation seems to have created quite a stir I believe that the mouse was already lying there when the photographer arrived but I wouldn't put it beyond Hisbollah to be smart enough to realize that it would create an irresistible bait for any photographer thinking of an American audience.
All my history books tell me that the Arabs were great merchants i.e. knowing what the public wants. If that is true I see no reason why that gut feeling couldn't be extended to PR.
rgds,
Silke

Anonymous said...

It's a poorly designed thought experiment. The additional sentences are more like blatant editorializing than propaganda. A truly 'pro-Israeli' propaganda piece would have omitted the 'slamming' and 'flattening' (which you can't see); inserted a 'claimed' into the story of the ambulance; pointed out the precision strike to the building on the right (which is visible) as well as remembering to mention the small little fact acknowledged by the journalist in 'It started with a mouse part 2' - that there were weapons and other military equipment in a nearby building.
Unfortunately, rather than being neutral, the mere act of framing a picture can leading to even more framing in the caption. Only rarely, as in the case of Tuvia Grossman, is reality so inverted that that the framing is unsustainable.
t34zakat

Mr. Gerson said...

I agree with Anon, it is poor.
The first caption was not "photojournalism", it was anti-Israel.

Anonymous said...

All three are anti-Israel propaganda.

The first is damning by tendentious framing and lying by omission and emotive language.

The second is, additionally, damning by crude blood libel.

The third is damning by faint acknowledgement that Israel's enemies are not entirely blameless.