Soccer Dad

Coloring the news

Yesterday, Yahoo! News featured a number of photographs of Fatah supporting demonstrations in the city of Tulkarm.

The first photograph is here and had the following caption.

A Palestinian woman holds a machine gun during a rally in support of Fatah in the West Bank town of Tulkarm January 10, 2007. . . .REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK)

Then there was this AP picture with this caption.

A Palestinian supporter of the Fatah Movement shouts slogans during a rally marking the forty-second anniversary of the founding of the group in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)

There were other pictures of the demonstration and another demonstration in Ramallah. One question that's worth asking is how many news reporters and photographers are employed in the Palestinian Authority controlled areas?

This question is particularly interesting because HonestReporting just noted that in Reuters promotional calendar there are a number of pictures of people farming or performing in the arts or sports. But for the Middle East the representative picture is of a Palestinian "militant."

Why was that the representative picture? After all if farming or technology was a focus in most other pictures why not include a picture of an Israeli advance in medicine, agriculture or technology? The answer Reuters gave wasn't particularly satisfying. I suppose that one answer would be that Reuters has a disproportionate number o f stringers in Gaza and the PA controlled areas of Judea and Samaria.

However if you go back to the Reuters photograph that shows a "militant" decked out in red holding a red flag with what appears to be English lettering, and a couple of questions occur.

1) Where have you ever seen a Palestinian "militant" with a red ski mask? If you look at most pictures from the PA controlled areas the face masks are either kaffiyehs or are black. I don't know that I've ever seen a differently colored face mask.
2) Where have you ever seen a red flag or banner at one of these demonstrations. Hamas's color is green and Fatah's appears to be yellow. The Palestinian flag is red, black, green and white, but the banner held by the "militant" is red except for the lettering.

I believe that observation 2 is more significan than observation 1. I still think that together they raise another possible question: is the picture in the Reuters calendar really from Gaza?

Blogdigger tags: Reuters, Israel, Media Bias.