[Reader-list] The Uses and Misuses of Photographs

[radhikarajen at vsnl.net]

Fully appreciated thoughts in the post. It would be relevant here to talk of a film, Parzania by a sycophant, who made money and scored political brownie points when in his movie he showed the rioters with saffron shawls as if saffron is the colour for rioters who are "hindu" and timed it well for the elections to sonias' advantage, but the advantage fell thru because of the bad script of Sonia speech, mouth ke saudagar.

 Does the film show rioters of muslim with green shawls. ? Do rioters have shawl to prove their point. ? Media , particularly visual media does not cross check the facts is evident from the times when they took up prince in the well, one channel gave his age as 6 years, another said it was four years, and so on. None had the correct factual positions right.

  Then came murders of Aarushi and hemraj, as the media was behaving like a mob, and goons at the crime scene it was sheer speculation than reporting that was to the nation. CBI and before that the police made mockery of criminal investigation, as crime scene was trampled by the media goons, elbowing each other out of vantage points and quoting "our sources". Nithari killings was another reportage where media made a killing of yellow tabloid journalism.

 The police also love their faces in Tvs and just blurt out which may well be very useful for defence to use in prosecution.

 Now take the delhi blast case,as the police says, the arrested have "confessed", issue that I want to raise is is this confession valid, will it stand legal scrutiny. ? It was a sad sight for me to see the red face of CBI officials , the premier investigation agency, in dock for ommisssions and commissions.

----- Original Message -----
From: Yousuf <ysaeed7 at yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:18 pm
Subject: [Reader-list] The Uses and Misuses of Photographs
To: sarai list <reader-list at sarai.net>, Peace Initiative <peace_initiative at yahoogroups.com>

> KARUTHA MASHI
> 
> The Uses and Misuses of Photographs
> By Sadanand Menon
> 
> Monday, September 22 was an extraordinary day in the annals the 
> Indian media. I would like to call it a day of shame. For, on that 
> day, our media collectively displayed its herd-like mentality and 
> its entirely uncritical attitude to the use – and misuse – of the 
> photographs it publishes.
> 
> At least eight mainstream English language newspapers (including 
> The Times of India, The Indian and The New Indian Express, The 
> Hindu, the Hindustan Times, The Deccan Chronicle) and many more in 
> the language press from North to South and East to West, 
> uncritically published almost identical photographs on their front 
> pages. The photographs were not generated by any single agency. 
> They were neither taken by ‘citizen’ photographers nor were they 
> official handouts. They were shots by individual staff 
> photographers as well as professional syndicated photographers. 
> What is amazing is what newsrooms across the country chose to do 
> with the image.
> 
> The photographs were of three suspects involved in the Delhi 
> blasts, who were arrested from their residence in Delhi’s Jamia 
> Nagar. Reports also claimed they were students of the Jamia Milia 
> Islamia. What was fishy about the photographs was that they showed 
> three totally unidentifiable people, their head and face 
> completely swathed in generous length of cloth, flanked by gun-
> toting policemen in mufti and other hangers-on. Yet it seemed 
> obvious that this was a photo-op provided to the media – not to 
> protect anyone’s identity – but to precisely create a definite 
> sense of identity.
> 
> For all the three suspects, to mask their identity, were tricked 
> up by the local police in identical ‘Palestinian Rumaals’ or 
> kaffiyehs or abayas or cassavas as this piece of head-dress is 
> variously known. Though none of their faces were visible, to any 
> casual reader of the newspapers it would be abundantly clear that 
> they were of ‘Arab’, ‘West Asian’ or ‘Islamic’ origin. A clear 
> case of racial profiling!
> 
> Some sceptical comments about this on the net, primarily generated 
> by documentary film maker Yousuf Sayeed who lives in the same 
> area, led to a small critical piece in The Hindustan Times two 
> days later, raising critical questions. The sceptics wondered how 
> it came about that the three arrested suspects came to be in 
> possession of identical, brand new rumaals, which they could 
> readily pull out of their pockets to cover their faces. As if, 
> upon realising they might be arrested soon, they went shopping and 
> bought identical scarves, so that everyone will recognise them as 
> ‘Islamic terrorists’. Critics pointed out that usually suspects 
> arrested on various charges mask their faces with their own 
> handkerchiefs or borrow towels or black cloth to hood their faces; 
> never before had it seemed like such a costume drama as the Delhi 
> police had managed to stage.
> 
> Then came the stunning revelation by the Delhi police 
> commissioner. He confessed that it was his department which had 
> dressed up the suspects in such a suggestive manner and, even more 
> alarmingly, that the Delhi police had purchased these pieces of 
> cloth “in bulk” for use by those arrested. Obviously, every 
> arrested person could now be given a suggestive ‘Islamic 
> terrorist’ look, thereby setting up dangerous subliminal 
> propaganda within the media.
> 
> Repulsive as it is, most people will agree that the Police and its 
> dirty-tricks department are not beyond using such obnoxious 
> methods. What is beyond explanation is how the media collectively 
> fell into this trap and carried these images without a single 
> question mark or doubt about what they so readily display on their 
> front pages.
> 
> For those not used to thinking about these things, the question 
> can be framed a little differently. It has to do with conceptual 
> issues related to the use (or misuse) of the image in the media. 
> On any given day, hundreds of thousands of photographs are 
> clicked. Of these, by common consensus, and governed by a larg=
ely 
> abstract logic dealing with the received wisdom of ‘news-value’ or 
> ‘news-worthiness’, about five hundred to a thousand pictures might 
> be considered for use within the media. After that, it is quite 
> chancy or dependent on strong editorial choices why a photograph 
> makes it to the papers, in particular the front page.
> 
> The front page photo, in the world of the print media, is usually 
> associated with an iconic status. It is supposed be a quick 
> encapsulation of what a paper or a region or a nation or a 
> civilisation imagines as its primary concern. It frames the news 
> of the day with a kind of visual evidence or back-up which then 
> illustrates how it wants to set up the communication and how it 
> wants the readers to enter the narrative.
> 
> Very seldom, across 365 days in a year, do we find identical 
> images on the front page. That is supposed to be the greatness and 
> the strength of democratic media practice that editorial position 
> and interpretation of events can vary. It is also part of the 
> notion of healthy competition in the media that variety, diversity 
> and contrariness are seen as virtues – that a news item or image 
> which is used sycophantically by one section of the press, can as 
> easily be used critically by another section of the same press.
> 
> That is why, when you come across a substantial section of the 
> national press use just one common image on their front page, and 
> that too without an critical remarks or interrogative comments, 
> one begins to smell the operation of ‘ideology’, which is nothing 
> but a blind acceptance of certain ‘ruling’ ideas of a class or of 
> a moment – ideas that indicate the power structures within which 
> ‘information’ and ‘meaning’ are manufactured.
> 
> To me it is shattering, that on the evening of September 21, 
> across the newsrooms of the best of Indian newspapers, not one 
> editorial discussion chose to evaluate the photograph of the three 
> arrested youngsters draped in checked cloth and use their 
> judgement to ‘read’ the picture in a dispassionate manner worthy 
> of a free press. Instead the Indian media collectively behaved as 
> they had not even during the period of the Emergency and its 
> draconian censorship. They all fell prey to their own sense of 
> prejudice and communal mindset. The Nazi propaganda machine could 
> not have expected to produce better results.
> 
> Obviously, Indian media needs to re-investigate the ‘frame’ within 
> which it is presenting, colouring and analysing news. Such 
> evidence of a collective cop-out is a serious failing, which it 
> needs to critically examine and carry out correctives. In fact, 
> this is a fit case for being taken before the Press Council.
> 
> Shame, a little shame is all that the media needs. For shame as 
> Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.
> 
> E O M       
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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