snapped shot

Photojournalist Wadih Shlink, a Reuters stringer who reports from Beirut, Lebanon, was pretty savagely beaten by Hezbullah "supporters" this morning. I haven't been able to find any details of this account yet, but from the history we already know, I'm betting that he was taking pictures of something that would've cast Hezbullah in a negative light.

I'll be waiting on the edge of my seat to see if Reuters can muster an ounce of condemnation against their terrorist friends' Hezbullah's savagery against one of their treasured employees.

A civil defence medic attends to photographer Wadih Shlink after he was beaten by Hezbollah supporters in a Beirut suburb May 7, 2008. Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition blocked main roads in Beirut with burning barricades on Wednesday, paralysing the capital in a long-running political standoff with the U.S.-backed government. REUTERS/ Fadi Ghalioum (LEBANON)

I have ghosts of Wadih's photographs here, here, and here.

Update: My good friend Jeha has e-mailed with some background from on the ground in Beirut:

Hey Brian,

The guy's Lebanese, he may have been attacked by people who belong to another confessional group. None of those idiots know Reuters...

That's because the day's is ugly, at least on the edges of the Southern side of Beirut, with clashes between mainly "Shiite" parties on one side, and Sunni and Druze parties on the other... The army's trying to stop it, but it has been much undermined by Hezb'O. The Easter side is generally quiet today....

Of course, I wouldn't suspect that he was beaten by anyone who knew him personally, or even necessarily of Reuters itself. And, given that they don't know him, I'd also be comfortable saying that they didn't beat him because he came from a different "confessional group," as Jeha puts it, as such a "political proclivity," in my parlance, wouldn't really be obvious from a casual inspection.

Notice, however, how he's carrying a camera bag in the linked photo above?

I don't know about you, but to me, that says pretty clearly that he was "on the job" at the time he was beaten. And, given Hezbullah's past, at least when it comes to how strongly they control news coverage about themselves, the most likely explanation for Wadih's beating still seems to be that he was taking pictures of something Hezbullah didn't want to be seen.

At least, not by news consumers in the West.

If any of you know more about this story, I'd love to hear it. Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Update: Could this be something that's going around? The photojournalist in this picture looks very familiar, but so far I'm unable to put a name to the face:

A cameraman reacts after he was hit in the head during a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, May 7, 2008. Hezbollah supporters clashed with government backers in several Beirut neighborhoods Wednesday, using guns and stones after the militant group blocked major roads with burning tires and dirt to enforce a labor strike. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Also, more details from Jeha:

Understood.

But don't read too much into it; those goons are good at such a thing, especially knowing a guy's origins. There are so many accents in tiny Lebanon, we can pinpoint one another's origins by the way we pronounce things.

Back in the civil war and tit for tat massacres, we had our confessions on our ID's. But there were faster ways; Christian Phalango militias could tell if someone was a Palestinian just by showing a tomato and asking them to name it. In the Mountain, Druze militiamen could easily tell "their" guys from the "others" by the way they pronounce their "a"... To that day, I still have my regional accent; even when I speak French of English, some words give me away to other Lebanese.

I've run across a very interesting celebrity sighting on the Palestinian newswires today:



Cue: car crash sound effect. At least I get an "F" for e"F"fort, right?

If you want to see the original that spawned this mess, be sure to click on over here. The original caption was:

A Palestinian man shouts as he hold up his empty cooking gas canister as he waits to fill it from a gas station in Gaza May 6, 2008. Gaza has been in the grips of a fuel shortage for weeks, the result of sharp Israeli cutbacks in supplies to the Hamas-controlled territory as well as a strike by an association of Palestinian petrol owners over Israeli supply limits. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

It's an AP Photo, so I can't show you the full thing. I'm kinda hoping that I can show you a heavily-cropped version, though. From the continued anti-Danish outrage in Pakistan, we learn what a real picture of Denmark looks like:



Priceless, as always. For those of you who are still keeping count, this makes for roughly three months of continual anti-Danish outrage in Pakistan.

Don't they have anything more constructive to do with their time over there?

If you're in the mood for some excellent Rage Runners-Up, be sure to keep reading beyond the fold! Continue reading »

My hat's off to Reuters photographer Fayaz Kabli, who captured this photograph with the most delicate of timing. Fayaz, that's some trigger finger you've got there!

Incidentally, from the looks of the photo, we've got a Rent-a-Riot Round-up going on in Srinagar, Kashmir at the moment. There are currently no Rage Boy Sightings on the wires, but I'm going to be keeping my eyes peeled. For live coverage, be sure to check out the Yahoo! slideshow from today's festivities.

Update: A legal way to embed the image? I'm game:



And before you ask:—Yes, that's all you get... for free. I'm just glad it's not another browser-killing Macromedia Flash object.

It concerns me to see pictures like this in the aftermath of the death of Reuters videographer Fadel Shana. It's one thing to pay respects to a comrade, that's obviously understandable.

It's the presence of the ginormous propaganda posters in the background that is a bit unsettling, at least to me.

Was this man a journalist, holding every side of a given issue to equal critique, aiming to bring the truth to discussion of modern events?

Or was he an activist, interested in promoting and supporting a very specific side of the conflict? A propagandist, if you will, bringing one very biased point of view to his coverage of news events on the ground?

Because, when I see propaganda posters like those posted in the picture above, I immediately think of the latter. Without question.

But hey, what are knee-jerk reactionaries for if their knees don't jerk on occasion?

To be charitable, I'll throw this one into "Human Shields" for now.

(Oh yeah, one wonders how the copyright on the propaganda posters would work, considering the photo was published on the Reuters wire. Who is "borrowing" from whom here, anyway?)

Welcome, Spectator readers and fellow Melanie Phillips fans!

For more information about the references she makes here, please see my followup article. And, if you like what you see here, feel free to subscribe to my feed—I'd love to hear what you think of the craziness that goes on over on this silly website. And if you ever see anything else that looks odd, be sure to let me know about it. We love covering photojournalism over here. One frame at a time!

Final Update on Tank Round: The mystery of the fired round is solved, courtesy "Faux" News?

I'm not sure what my Lightstalking friends are going to think about that little twist, but this is pretty convincing evidence.

I still think the questions regarding what he was doing there and what exactly the IDF was firing at need to be addressed, but this definitely seems to answer any controversy surrounding the circumstances of his death, as the other videos answered the controversy surrounding the "strange" sequence of the wire photos.

As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

Interjection: I think the question that forest asks of our Lightstalkers is important enough to highlight here. He asks, to wit:—

The discussion at Lightstalkers is pretty interesting. I wonder if there could ever be a situation where some of those people would consider that a journalist might have been a bit too chummy with terrorists? Or may actually be a terrorist armed with a camera instead of a gun? I think it's a mindset where advocacy journalism is accepted in place of old fashioned journalistic standards of impartiality.

If they want to advocate, they should get out of professional journalism and start a blog or something.

The highlighted portion is particularly interesting. After all, if professional journalists "embed" themselves with terrorist forces that in the best cases wear no formal uniform—and in the worst, play "dress up"—should we really be surprised if they are eventually mistaken as being a terrorist? Continue reading »

Here's a nice example from Reuters, dutifully pointing out the obvious:

Palestinian children hold up a placard reading "Don't kill childhood in Palestine" during a protest against the Israeli army in Gaza April 7, 2008. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this is who killed "childhood in palestine."