Friday, July 11, 2008
Iranian fauxtography
On the small chance that you, like me, were generally off the blogosphere yesterday, do treat yourself to a chuckle over the latest clownishness from the Islamic Republic.
Of course, it would be nice to say that a country that cannot do decent fraudulent propaganda must not be able to build a nuclear weapon. Sadly, there are at least two responses. First, of course it can -- one has almost nothing to do with the other. Indeed, the United States government is terrible at fraudulent propaganda, as anybody on the left will tell you, but it can develop big bombs.
Second, we should not leap to the conclusion that this propaganda did not generally work. Far more people will have seen the picture in the pages of their newspaper than will read the truth on right-wing political blogs.
4 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Jul 11, 08:47:00 AM:
"...than will read the truth on right-wing political blogs."
Let's not replace one piece of propaganda with your own piece of (subtle) propaganda. Actually, the MSM--NY Times, LA Times, Associated Press, etc.--covered the fake-photo story thoroughly yesterday. (Michelle quotes the NY Times.)
By Noumenon, at
Fri Jul 11, 12:37:00 PM:
I think once they decided to run a story about the missiles and allocated space for a "missile launch money shot" photo, the propaganda was 90% complete no matter if they drew the photo freehand. But at least this is easier to tamp down.
By 
, at
Fri Jul 11, 05:09:00 PM:
Let's not replace one piece of propaganda with your own piece of (subtle) propaganda.
Without doing a detailed search on the issue, my impression has been that through the years, the right-wing blogosphere has been much more aware of Iranian, Pali,and Hezbollah fauxtography than has the MSM. It is good to see that the MSM is paying the issue attention now.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Jul 11, 07:47:00 PM:
To BT
You may find this NPR piece by David Folkenflik interesting: "A look at how the doctored photo made its way to news outlets — and how the change was uncovered."
Link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92454193
