Tell the world more about us than we care for it to know.
Media coverage of Hurrican Katrina has meant that the internal, and sometimes the external editor has been turned off. The piece on WWLTV with Mayor Ray Nagin is a fine performance by a public official in extreme crisis.
The performance of AP and Yahoo in their coverage leaves rather more to be desired.
One of my favourite sites is BagNewsNotes where they dissect the meta-messages carried by media photos and images. The suggestion is that the images editors choose to illustrate an event, tells us something about their thinking and their assumptions.
But we also choose the language for the captions, and that too tells a tale. Check these.
A looter carries a bucket of beer out of a grocery store
A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store
Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store
Now, you tell me what difference. It can't be the actions, it can't be the water, they are both identical, I wonder what it is?
Simple - the two photos referring to "looting" are from Associated Press (AP), the photo referring to "finding" comes from Agence France-Presse (AFP). The wire services provide the captions, not Yahoo.
Why, what were you thinking?
Posted by: Fazal Majid | August 31, 2005 at 08:15 PM