Photography failures escalate Gaza propaganda
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BILD PHOTO OF A PALESTINIAN PHOTOGRAPHER IN GAZA. lack of food is real for many civilians, but here they are BEGGING to THE CAMERA.
The propaganda part of the Gaza war is being fought largely with photos. Rhetoric is a lot of it, too, but photos pack more of a wallop.
A July 24 New York Times story about civilian starvation highlighted a photo of an emaciated 18-month-old Palestinian child. After complaints and more reporting, The Times added an editor’s note several days later saying that the child had pre-existing health conditions that contributed to his appearance. Critics also noted that his healthier older brother was standing nearby but not included in the photo.
The editor’s note sparked even more outrage from people who thought the photo choice was intended to put false blame on Israel. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was (absurdly) considering suing The Times for defamation and declared (also absurdly) that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”
On Tuesday, the right-wing German newspaper Bild reported that a Palestinian professional photographer had, without disclosure, staged powerful photos of a crowd of Gazans holding empty bowls and pleading for food. They were begging at him, not at someone actually distributing food. The argument could be made that he was simply recreating scenes that are happening daily, but it is nonetheless a violation of news photography ethics. After the Bild story, several news outlets around the world stopped using the photographer’s work.
Time magazine had to defend its similar Aug. 1 cover photo by a different Palestinian photographer. The magazine did not explicitly say the photo wasn’t staged.
“With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren’t reporting, they’re producing propaganda,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on X.
Hamas’ release of videos of a skeletal Israeli hostage in a tunnel a week ago was propaganda, too. They staged him digging his own grave, and juxtaposed shots of starving Gaza children, but there was nothing staged about the hostage’s frailty.
SCREENSHOT OF A SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO POSTED BY THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT.
It goes the other way, as well. In July, for instance, Israel Defense Forces published photos of some members of Hamas eating a bountiful meal in a tunnel. No one has debunked those images. Social media accounts of the Israeli government show healthy Gazans availing themselves of all kinds of food. The scenes may be real, but they are not representative. At all.
Propaganda obscures truth. Reliable visual journalism reveals truth. But in Gaza, truth has been hard to come by. How many people are starving? Why isn’t food reaching them? Propaganda has helped to produce wildly divergent* views. That’s one reason many global news organizations have intensified their demand that Israel allow foreign news media into Gaza. That wouldn’t be bias-proof, of course. But relying mostly on local Gaza journalists, who themselves face hunger and life-threatening danger, makes it harder to know the realities.
* I consider the first linked story more credible than the second one.
If interested, here’s a March 2024 blog post on the related issue of digital photo manipulation.