H13924
Headlines : MediaMilitary Forces Journalists to Delete Images of Civilian Killings
The forced deleting of images by the US military as well as the refusal to let journalists continue in their work constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of expression as it obstructed the ability of the media present to seek, receive and impart information about the 4 March incident, without falling under the exceptions stipulated by ICCPR art.19(3).
[Posted By ShiftShapers]Republished from Editor & Publisher
New York – In the past day, there has been wide media coverage of an official report on the slaying of Afghan civilians by U.S. forces early last month. The Afghan human rights commission concluded that American marines overreacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force, peppering civilians and vehicles with machine-gun fire in attacks that covered 10 miles of road and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant.
Gaining much less coverage are the report’s comments on a nearly-forgotten aftermath of the apparent crimes, carried by E&P and other media outlets at the time: the U.S. military’s forced “deletion” of images taken by Associated Press cameramen and others. A freelance photographer working for The AP and a cameraman working for AP Television News said then a U.S. soldier deleted their photos and video showing a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The AP lodged a protest with the American military.
The military defended their action in a letter to the AP later, stating that images gathered by “untrained people” might “capture visual details that are not as they originally were.” But the Afghan commission concluded that there were “not…
Posted by ShiftShapers
Warning: Anyone who takes this blog seriously will be shot. Anyone who does not take it seriously will be buried alive by a Mitsubishi bulldozer. Welcome to (A)utonomous Resistance, GNN’s exclusive one-stop infoshop for radical resources and information....
Sadly, we need the media the most during wartime. especially during unjust wars like Iraq. But the media worries about being labeled unpatriotic if it reports the truth. The action by the military in this case is normal, they do it in every war. It is called CYA (cover your a—). I blame the media more. They should have this cover-up and the bullying tactics of the military on the front page of every paper.
This behavior is disgusting. I agree with shades; it should be the story itself. How can the media actually behave so complicitly as to not cover its own repression as a story worthy of retelling.
Basically, the American public will, in general, not learn about such actions, though it will be discussed in every journalism school and on various blogs and such. So there are two levels of official reality it seems – one that is the official record (modified by direct censorship) and another that is the official propegated record (which is even more sanitized by the censorship of ommission).
“untrained people” might “capture visual details that are not as they originally were.”
He means they might capture images of murdered civilians who are not alive as they originally were.
haha I love when they call it “peppering’. Just a slight seasoning of bullets…
The fact that we are seeing propaganda is, in itself, telling us that it is not a ‘just war’. It is a “if it smells like fish, this must be Denmark” logic…. to cover up an un-just war.
We have seen the tactics used in the blatant Russian media crackdown [journalists murdered by Putin’s people] and it looks like America is not far behind.