Trust in advertising

A few months ago, Ryan of the Dead Parrot Society debunked the claim that certain photographs of an execution on Haifa Street, in Baghdad, were taken from close range. Ryan is the online producer for a Washington State newspaper; he has experience with news photography and the ability to ask real photographers questions. So he did. He found out that the photos in question were almost certainly taken from a distance.

This hasn’t stopped Powerline and Michelle Malkin from continuing to perpetuate the myth that the photographers were standing right next to the execution.

That issue seems, at first, as if it’s tangential to the bigger question of cooperation — but it’s not really. Consider: if I say “the photographer got a picture of the execution from a block away, which proves that the terrorists knew the photographer was there,” does that sound reasonable? Not so much. That’s very different than saying “the terrorists were right next to the photographers, so the terrorists must have had a reason to leave the photographers alone.”