Can you believe what you see?
Can you believe what you see?
Objective truth can be hard to find these days. It is no wonder that many folk get fooled into believing the postmodern idea that truth is subjective, that what is true for you may not be true for me because we each experience things from different perspectives and colour everything accordingly. If everything is altered by passing it through the filter of subjective perception, then it can be very hard to know what is the real objective truth - or so the story goes.
Most of us know that our newspaper reporters are likely to put some kind of slant on things even when they are supposedly doing their best to give us the cold hard facts. But they are subject to various pressures - political, cultural, philosophical, and also personal as well. One needs to develop some astute critical thinking skills to avoid being taken in by whichever bias sways the news according to whoever (photographer, reporter, editor, newspaper bosses) and some good eyesight as well.
An example to consider are some photographs from the Israel/Lebanon war zone.
If one is to believe Hezzbollah, without provocation the Israelis targeted and hit a three story building from a town where no missiles were hidden or used. However, if one is to believe the Israelis, over 150 missiles had been fired from Qana, many from directly beside a three story building. The Israelis support their report with video footage showing such launches. But it was not until upwards of eight hours after the Israeli missile attack that the building (presumably from where the rockets were being launched) collapsed. Isn’t that kind of odd? When the building did eventually collapse Hezzbollah invited in the media to photograph the carnage. However, if you follow the timeline and various poses, there is evidence that the objective truth is being distorted. The same few dead children are photographed over and over, being held at different times, in different ways: in short, the photos seem to be carefully staged and repeated in slightly different ways, sometimes for hours on end. Here is a report that identifies some of these different shots and poses. Warning - some of the images are quite disturbing.
Do you believe that smoke may waft into the atmosphere producing repetitive symmetrical patterns? It is said that the camera does not lie, but all of us who use image editing software know full well that the software sure can. Here is another example to demonstrate how a news photographer can distort “cold hard facts” to suit an agenda.
Given that it was the same photographer in both these separate incidences, one who obviously champions the cause of Hezzbollah, we might hope that such cases are few and far between. One would like to hope that is so. This photographer clearly has a bias which needs to be considered before believing anything that he would have you see. The victim in this current Middle Eastern war zone is not just the terrible “collateral damage” on either side, but also the objective truth misrepresented to advance a certain agenda.
The following video clip added 12 August 2006 - a real “must see”.
