The New York Times’ June 26 edition featured a large photograph above the fold that caused readers to pause- it depicted an 11-month old with two broken legs, ostensibly by Mugabe’s thugs. The caption read:
Suffering Great and Small
An 11-month-old boy with broken legs found shelter in a church in Harare, Zimbabwe. His mother said youths with the governing party shattered his legs while trying to make her disclose the whereabouts of her husband, an opposition supporter.
Powerful. Dramatic. A lasting symbol of the brutality that Mugabe and his cohorts are willing to use in order to intimidate opposition and secure victory in the elections.
Unfortunately, the media, and as a result, the public, are victims of a dupe perpetrated by a mother understandably concerned with the welfare of her young child. The New York Times published this correction:
A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.
The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. In multiple interviews, she said that youths backing President Robert Mugabe had thrown her son to the concrete floor - and she still says that event did occur.
The owner of the house where she and the baby were staying confirmed that marauding youths from the governing party had attacked the house. He said he believed the baby had been thrown to the floor during the attack, but the owner was in a different room and did not witness it firsthand. The landlord, other lodgers, neighbors and opposition supporters also confirmed that the mother had been singled out because her husband was an opposition member.
The mother, however, later told The Times that the boy had been wearing casts even at the time of the attack, as part of a treatment he had received for his club feet at a different medical facility. She said she misrepresented the boy’s injuries to generate help because she could not afford corrective surgery for the boy.
It is likely that the attack indeed occured as the woman and her neighbors describe it. She is clearly a victim, and in her tragic situation, she quite honorably did everything in her power to attain medical treatment for her child.
While our hearts break for her plight and that of her countrymen, and though we recognize Mugabe as a brutal dictator whose death or exile is a necessary step for a return to Zimbabwe’s former prosperity, we Western readers must demand that our media maintain the strictest accuracy in their dispatches. Though Mugabe is a brutal dictator, and other innocents have been assaulted in the very manner that the caption describes, we cannot countenace our media publishing images that are themselves untrue, but reflect a larger truth. That is the flawed logic behind Enderlin’s defense of his Al-Durah reporting, as well as Gideon Levy’s and Arad Nir’s assertions that it does not matter if the IDF actually shot Al-Durah, since they have undoubtedly killed many Palestinian children.
The New York Times is to be commended for the correction, although they have been duped recently by the Iranians, along with the rest of the major media organizations. But the fact that a concerned mother can so easily put one by their fact-checkers should be cause for alarm. No surprise that Palestinians and Iranian see fooling major Western media outlets as no great feat.
Poynter Online covered the story, including an interview with Meaghan Looram, picture editor of The New York Times.
This is not new. The NYTimes is a repeat offender. Go to this Link and scroll down. I read the NYTimes every day. (I must be a masochist). Most of their photo coverage of the Middle East is propaganda shots pure and simple. People need to train themselves to be as skeptical about pictures as they are about text. You need to ask yourself: “What is this a picture of?”, “Why is it here?” “What does it illustrate?” “Is it what it purports to be?”
Just because it is in the NYTimes does not mean that it is true, or even relevant. Reuters, AP, NYTimes, the rantings of the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton, what difference does it make? If you read something in the newspaper, see it on TV or the internet, your reaction must be:
“That is very interesting, I wonder if it is true.”
Comment by Fat Man — July 11, 2008 @ 10:34 pm
It’s apparently not hard to fool the MSM. I guess that when reporters and photographers prowl an area for a good story and photo-op, determined to get something before deadline, there is no time for fact checking and nuances. That’s especially true if they don’t know the language. Their reporting may well consist of just getting the story down word-by-word through an interpreter, maybe posing a few non-skeptical questions. That’s true not just in Zimbabwe but anywhere, including the Middle East.
And if it’s a question of a pack of reporters, cameramen, and photographers, the situation is even worse. They cannot get anywhere near the object of their “story.”
And if these reporters and photographers, many of whom know little of the language or culture, are indeed accompanied by a guide-interpreter, their movements and access to background information are going to be further limited.
An example of an exception is American reporter named Andrew Meldrum, who I believe wrote for–of all papers–The Guardian. His book, Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe, is an example of a reporter who had lived for years in the country and really tried to do some honest, in-depth reporting. He was kicked out of the country for his troubles. Frankly, I am not sure it takes much for a reporter to get kicked out of Zimbabwe, but his book makes for riveting reading.
I guess that, when you have to make a deadline, and you know what your editor wants and expects from you, you’ll get in whatever story is readily at hand. And I imagine that, if a hundred other journalists are filing the same story (which probably was not the case with the Zimbabwean boy), you feel validated in what you’re doing.
Comment by Joanne, — July 12, 2008 @ 10:00 am
increasingly there are no reporters anymore. their are media workers, who are ignorant, unable to reason and can be readily fooled. they don’t have the mental skills and training to do journalism which is too costly for their corporate owners, who are not interested in informing, but in advertising revenue (which they are losing). this system is not conducive to critical, indepenent thinking and serious effort.
the editors not only accept and publish crap, but actually reward it and punish serious journalism.
the local SF paper has become sheer crap and they just raised the price from 25c to 75. hopefully it’ll die, but so does civilization.
a lot of it has to do with the deterioration of the quality of the audience due to education collapse: few read serious stuff anymore, don’t want to think, can’t distinguish between facts and fiction. so the media has deteriorated to accommodate it. The two sides feed on one another and bring society down the drain.
Comment by oao — July 12, 2008 @ 11:51 am
here’s another journalist:
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2008/07/spyer_on_changing_times.html
Comment by oao — July 13, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
[…] Landes calls my attention to this post at Augean Stables by his colleague Lazar reporting on how a desperate Zimbabwean mother fooled the […]
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