Media laps up fake photo of Bin Laden

BY Madabhushi Sridhar| IN Media Practice | 04/05/2011

Many newspapers and channels used a morphed photo of Osama after he was killed.

MADABHUSHI SRIDHAR comments on the rashness of this act

“Fake Osama death photo fools no one but stupid Pakistanis,” was the headline on a website, wherein a commentator posted, “I can't believe it actually took a couple of hours for folks to come to agreement on the utter fakeness of the purported Osama death photo. Don't people have eyes? That's the fakest thing I've seen since the Shroud of Turin. Thankfully the savvy Western media were not taken in by the picture. It was however put on Pakistani television which is apparently run by a bunch of blind morons.” This rash reproduction of the picture also spread to several parts of the world including India.

Pakistani television stations cautiously broadcast this morphed picture describing it as the unconfirmed image of Osama bin Laden’s bloodied face after the United States claimed he had been killed. “The picture of Osama bin Laden’s dead body has been released. It is unverified,” said the commentator on Pakistan’s largest TV network, Geo. Other channels also showed the image of a face, which sported a bushy and black beard without any visible traces of the white or grey detected in the most recent video footage of Bin Laden when he was alive. There were extensive blood stains on the forehead and left temple. The right eye was shut but the whites of the left eye were visible. The hair was mangled and the mouth was slightly open with teeth showing.

Another renowned news agency, the Associated Press, retracted a photograph released late night of 1^st May, purporting to show the dead body. AP announced that it cannot independently verify that the person in the photo was bin Laden.

The Iraqis in Baghdad watched a news broadcast on Arabic satellite news channel Al-Arabiya showing an image of Laden’s body. This image was also circulated on the Internet and displayed on some television news programs abroad. No U.S. or Pakistani officials have confirmed its authenticity, and two U.S. officials have even warned NBC News that the image was a hoax.

On 3 May 2011, Cyril Washbrook, on his mediaspy.org website wrote about how the fake photo had tripped the media outlets world over. “The image was aired on Pakistani television and spread quickly on social networking sites such as Twitter. The photograph's authenticity had not been verified by Pakistani or American authorities, but a number of mainstream media outlets - including Britain's The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail - positioned the photograph prominently in their coverage of the killing.

Referring to propaganda tactics of US Government, Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet.com (the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com and the author of Order Out Of Chaos) wrote on May 2, 2011, “Killing Laden is a pretty big deal. You’d think that it would be in the interest of US forces to take a snapshot of the elusive terror leader to milk the propaganda value of such a momentous turn of events, and yet the corporate media has given us nothing but a years old fake picture. This makes little sense, unless of course, somebody is trying to hide something, namely the fact that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for the best part of a decade….. But the fake photo, which is still being used by the likes of the Daily Mail and the London Telegraph even after it was proven to be a contrived hoax that has been circulating on the Internet for years, fits perfectly with everything surrounding the Bin Laden myth – the fake video tapes, the fake audio tapes, the fake claim of responsibility for 9/11.”

When such a controversy was already brewing, the Telugu media did not hesitate before using the fake photo. Media editors in Hyderabad rushed in with the fake picture to score a first. Sakshi channel, belonging to YS Jaganmohan Reddy son of former Chief Minister YS Rajakekhar Reddy, claimed that it was ‘first on Sakshi’ while NTV belonging to Telugu Desham leaders claimed that it was their exclusive. This puts them in poor light considering the fact that lawmakers in US were urging Obama’s administration to release an authentic picture. It was HMTV of Hyderabad that nailed the lie of other channels by revealing how the picture could have been morphed. Soon the other channels withdrew their ‘claims’ without any ‘regret’.

After all of this, next morning (3^rd May) the print media furthered the saga by publishing imaginary photos of ‘shot Laden” without saying that it was a morphed picture. It is interesting that the same morphed photo is being used by media in Islamabad and Hyderabad and some Arabic countries. Even Eenadu TV used it for a while. All Telugu dailies (Andhra Bhoomi, Vaartha, Andhra Jyothi) used this picture on their front pages. However, no English daily used it except Indian Express which said that the ‘photo turns out to be dated 2009’. The Times of India published a news item explaining how Islamabad media was fooled by this photo, without using the photo. It is not only untruthful but also unethical to show such a disturbing picture without enquiring into genuineness of the photo.

Meanwhile, the White House said on 2^nd May, that it was weighing whether to release photographs amid calls from some key lawmakers to do so to prove the al-Qaida chief is truly dead. "We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama,’’ President Obama's gruff anti-terror adviser, John Brennan, told reporters. His comments came as top lawmaker, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, warned that Washington may have to release photographs to quell any doubts.