30 Replies to “Vultures At The Feast”

  1. Optics are bad for sure(no pun intended).
    But these are tragic stories in a lot of cases, and composition has a lot to do with getting the message accross.
    And then there’s Green Helmet Guy…..remember him?

  2. Where’s Green Helmet Guy when you really need him . . he knows how to really organize our honest media by creating the fake shots they want with the least amount of actual journalistic effort or integrity on their part.

  3. A unique perspective on the Press. They look more like ghouls to me though. Probably joking as well they took the picture of the dead.
    JMO

  4. I am beginning to think that afer a pending nuclear armegeddon, that the cockroaches will have company in the form of journalists.

  5. things like this are the reason we are in Libya…
    it don’t come easy but as a proud nation mindful of history the judge you HAVE to make an effort…

  7. So I wonder if the “award-winning” photographer at least used his financial windfall to help pay for a dignified funeral for the girl?
    Poor families in the Third World can’t afford funerals, graves, caskets, etc., and God only knows where her body will end up being dumped. Meanwhile people in North America have been know to give funerals for their spoiled pets. Very disturbing.

  8. “A unique perspective on the Press. They look more like ghouls to me though. Probably joking as well they took the picture of the dead.”
    Because they are ghouls. However, at least they used to be up front about it.
    It’s their modern penchant for poseur sanctimoniousness that grates.

  9. Point well made by Mr Evans. It just makes you wonder what percent of what we see and read is in context, fair and representing the reality of the situation: I suspect not much given my exposure to the press. Good post though…

  10. I have a daughter and we were both blessed to be born in Canada, that said if that were my child laying there dead and the ghouls were posing and snapping away I’d probably impose a little impromptu justice of my own. Looting someone’s soul is a far more serious offence than stealing trinkets.

  12. So what’s the difference between these insects and the Hollywood paparazzi again? Oh that’s right, self-importance and imperiousness.

  13. Chris at April 5, 2011 5:21 PM:
    “All Journalists, All photo-journalists are scum. They are parasites.”
    I used to work in Third World refugee camps. From time to time I would do photo-journalism, interviews, documentation etc. to get more aid for the people. I can honestly say that in those 12 years I never took a single photo without asking permission and explaining what it would be used for. But that was back in the day when there was a thing called ETHICS.
    The only exception to my self-imposed rule was when I was secretly documenting the actions of the brutal militaries that made people refugees in the firt place.

  14. Well, I am sufficiently sickened.
    “I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”
    William Tecumseh Sherman

  15. Reserve a place in hell for the organizations that hand out awards for a photo of a dead teenage girl, perfectly composed to catch the two looters running off in the background. There may have been valid reasons for documenting the occurrences in that Haitian street, but, getting awards for shock value and composition can not be one of them.
    The other two examples are simple staging to show a faked result. They are despicable.
    A free press is one of the important cornerstones of a democratic society. Undue attempts to restrict that must be opposed by everyone. Press freedom includes an important duty to watch for and reduce abuse of that freedom as much as possible. There are a great many examples in just the last few years of the news industry’s leadership failing miserably in that duty.

  16. If I were strolling through some third world apocalypse and came across that scene, those reporters may have easily joined that girl.

  17. SDH:
    Damn right that Kevin Carter was one sick F%ck.
    That photo he took haunts me even today, particularly in light of the fact that he waited for quite awhile waiting to see if the vulture would make a move towards the starving child.

  19. Actually, these photographers, while arguably amoral, are simply and likely contemptuously providing a service to the real voyeurs who actually pay to see them. I question the sanctity of the altruistic minds that peer upon the poor wretch’s demise and feel like they have to do some token gesture to absolve one’s self of any guilt or think that they are helping the situation by donating money to some poverty-pimping organization. Nothing short of British-style colonial rule over decades could ever remediate such depraved and failed states. That’s not PC anymore nor is defending the rule of law, preventing our own nations from inching toward a similar fate.

  20. Poverty sucks. I have a fifteen year old daughter. I can just imagine what was going through her mind, basically, not much thinking. This is the kind of barbarism that is the norm of human history.
    How lucky we are to have been born where we were born, and how foolish we are to risk what we have in terms of freedom and rule of law because it is in some ways imperfect.

  21. I don’t see why all the sanctimonious outrage at photo journalists doing their job. Keep in mind that they were probably all herded there by the authorities of whatever war/conflict/kinetic action. Their job, ever since photography was developed is to show the human side, the horror and the reality to those back safe and sound. A haunting image of a lifeless child carries more impact that a sentence buried in the 23rd paragraph of some report. From the Civil War to the Ivory Coast today, a picture is still worth a thousand words.
    I didn’t see to much complaining when War blogger Michael Yon’s work was linked from SDA.
    To compare a photojournalist to paparazzi is like lumping Michael Moore in with Cecil B. DeVille, Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford.

  22. Texas Canuck, I do not agree with your statement above. I agree with your assertion that journalists were most likely herded there for the photo opp although I do not agree with your claim that Mr Yon’s work is of the quality or accuracy of Mr Moore.

  23. Texas Canuck, I’d argue there is a considerable difference between Yon’s work and the photography of Carter or Hansen.
    This is not about accurately recording conflict and death, but their callous disregard and impropriety to get an award winning shot.
    FWIW, I have no problem with looters getting shot.

  24. I tend to agree with Texas Canuck, but I still find it repulsive. People do need to know when atrocities occur, and pictures are the best evidence. The fact that photographers become desensitized to it, and appear disrespectful, doesn’t diminish the need for news coverage.
    The real crime, in my opinion, is when journalists stage events, as in the green helmet situation. When they know damn well that something is a stunt, or propaganda, that’s when ethics come into play.
    If you really want to witness disrespect for human life, watch a major surgery. I lost a lot of respect for medical staff, after sitting in on a C-section. I can understand keeping yourself at arm’s length, emotionally, but people who deal with death seem to have a disdain for human life.

  25. I kind of agree with Texas, there is nothing wrong with taking pictures of bodies in a disaster zone. It’s the job. The Kevin Carter incident was something else; according to some accounts (I don’t know the truth), he could have helped the starving child but didn’t, winning a Pulitzer instead. I believe he wound up killing himself.
    The picture above is dishonest because the implication is that the dead girl is isolated and abondoned, and that such bodies were strewn all over the place, of note to noone. As a matter of fact, if her body hadn’t been moved to improve the impact of the image I’d be surprised; and some of those photojournalists seem to be enjoying themselves unashamedly.
    As for the Palestinian woman, I simply trust no Western “reporting” on this subject.

  26. Lazy vultures hoping to score big with lefty
    propagandists who run the dead tree MSM.

  27. Coach
    Well you may have a point…exposure does lead to what some refer to “brutalization”….
    Calm is contageous much like panic….but calm is helpful while panic is not.
    It’s sort of like the witnesses to an industrial accident criticizing the guy who calmly stepped forward and applied a tourneque to a victim who had just had his arm ripped off. Their complaint, he was unfeeling because he wasn’t frozen in place wailing at the horror of it all….like deer in the headlights.
    I never had a problem with Carter’s picture which did illustrate the situation…..the “blue helmit guy” Reuters, and the Al Dura hoax are the problem.
    It’s a learning curve….the exclusion of the press with Grenada for the first 3 days worked well….tight control of the press during Gulf I was merely a return to WW2 protocols.
    Ethics? Photographers first appeared on the battle fields during the War of Northern Aggression and the Crimean War…..but it was decades before images of casualties were published. Those early images were after the bodies had been policed up……
    This finally degenerated into the press coverage of the Viet Nam experience…because quite simply the press was hostile not naive or ignorant.

  29. That story about the woman reporter barely getting out of Libya… the story was full of the same kind of pictures of the freedom fighters…. 20+ reporters storming the beach following 1 fighter.

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