The photo above was originally published by Beirut Report over two years ago
With scores reported killed in Syria this week, I decided to check if Iran and Hezbollah TV could sustain their blatantly hypocritical policy of downplaying or ignoring the bloodbath.
Unfortunately, little has changed at Hezbollah’s Al Manar and Iran’s Press TV, with both influential news organizations choosing to favor the suppressive regime line over people out in the streets, when the dictator doing the suppressing is a close friend.
In fact Press TV even leads its coverage today with the headline “5 security forces killed in Syria” while the BBC, Al Jazeera and others are reporting over 100 protestors killed by Syrian security forces over the last two days.
Instead of covering the state’s killings, both Al Manar and Press TV have honed in on the reported resignation of the well-known Al Jazeera personality Ghassan Ben Jeddou (photo below) as a top story.
A self-admitted and proud supporter of Hezbollah’s leader, Ben Jeddou has now been quoted as saying Al Jazeera “incites and mobilizes” and “abandoned its policy of objectivity”. Why Ben Jeddou chose to resign now that the focus is on Syria, despite four months of relentlessly reporting and encouraging of revolts in Tunis, Egypt, Yemen and Libya was not a question entertained by either Al Manar or Press TV.
What Press TV did do is copy-paste a picture from this blog without any attribution.
The above picture of Ben Jeddou originally appeared on this blog two and a half years ago, after I snapped it and posted it as the second picture in this post. Here are a couple of screen shots:
But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been plagiarized on this blog and it has nothing to do with a news organization’s politics. In fact, the pro-Western Lebanese website www.nowlebanon.com has also republished pictures from this site with no attribution. It’s a trend I’ve noticed across several news organizations I’ve worked at in the Middle East, where plagiarism is seen as perfectly normal activity by both editors and graphic designers, who when lacking a picture often call out “just grab it from the internet!”
I doubt disregard for attribution at many Arab organizations will change any time soon (though I hope Press TV will prove me wrong) but in the meantime, I figure I’ll keep pointing it out.
3 comments
How much right to you have to claim theft of an image when you snapped your pic from Al Jazeera live on TV? You just made it easier for them to get the screen grab.
Charles, mshtaeen! Well, technically it is an image produced by my camera. I mean one could argue that every photograph is a screen shot of sorts! Had I not captured the moment, it wouldn’t have been available for their use. Of course I claim no ownership over the broadcast, but I don’t think it is honest of them to just grab images from a blog and post them as their own. And I thought it was a good occasion to point out how common that behavior is at media organizations.
Hmm Nice Link, I Used to Check This one for Press News Tv Iran Streaming, but your link also works! 😉
ayesha!