The Air Force gets some--and what's the AP up to?
Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 8:51PM What I find especially interesting is that some versions of the AP story went out on the wire with this photo...
The caption (not included in some versions of the story, most notably the one on Breitbart) went like this: Children watch as U.S. army soldiers from Ghostrider Company, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, unseen, search their home during Operation Phantom Phoenix in the village of Abu Musa on the northern outskirts of Muqdadiyah, in the volatile Diyala province, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. The U.S. military launched Operation Phantom Phoenix on Tuesday as a nationwide campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic) Source
Am I paranoid, or does it seem to you readers that the AP could have run any number of pics of warplanes taking off to execute these missions, or bomb damage or even stock photos of the B-1, but instead they run a picture of little kids looking out a window at a related ground operation and leave the caption off. Sure, the story includes coverage of ground action, but news photos require captions, especially if they are of something that's not directly related to the headline. I'm thinking the idea was to leave the impression that American warplanes are bombing targets right near little Iraqi kids who must stay inside to have any chance of avoiding the rain of iron death from the sky.
At this point, I can't really put anything past the media.
Chris Clukey
Contributing Editor
Reader Comments (1)
my name is Marko and i took that picture of Iraqi kids looking at U.S. army soldiers from G troop, 2nd SCR search their house in the village of Abu Musa, about 100 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, on Jan. 10.
I'd like to point out that no AP image goes to wire users without a caption. The caption is incorporated in the JPG file and all users that download the photograph receive the caption too. It is not the AP that disregarded the caption for this photograph, the ones who did that are the editors of the website in question.
Operation Phantom Phoenix kicked off on Jan. 7, with the unit i was embedded with doing the first portion of the whole effort. As the whole operation was a secret, it wasn't possible for AP Photos to embed a photographer with the troops that performed operations south of Baghdad simply because we didn't know anything about it. It was just by a stroke of luck that i was in Diyala and was given an opportunity to take pictures, as i spent a month and a half in Muqdadiyah and Baqouba prior to Phantom Phoenix kicking off, so i simply was there when it started.
As for the photograph itself, i just took a picture of what i saw in front of me, as i always do. The soldiers searhed that house, talked to the residents, detained noone and were very professional about it. The kids were worried because they are exactly that, kids, they can't grasp the whole situation in front of them. What they see is a group of men with guns entering their front yard. And that does sound and look like something to worry about, no matter who those men are and what their intentions might be. Running that photo as a small detail from the whole operation that i followed seems absolutely legitimate to me, especially if you take a look at all the pictures i transmitted from the area that day and in the days before Jan. 10. I firmly believe that my photographs accurately described what happened during the initial phase of the operation.
As for photographs of the aereal operation south of Baghdad, we don't transmit old pictures to illustrate new news. If i were in Baghdad at that particular time and if i saw say a B2 flying over, i would have taken a picture of it and would have transmitted it, because it would be the closest thing to following that operation. A fresh picture close to the place that news happen in can sometimes do the job of illustrating it, but we always do our best to be at the face of the place when things happen.
I most sincerely hope i clarified the issues that you raised in this post, and i thank you for the opportunity to respond.
Many thanks,
My best regards,
marko