Translation of Der Spiegel article by Deirdre Kevin of the European
Institute for the Media...
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From: Deirdre Kevin <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 17:49:32 +0200
To: David Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: FW: (Fwd) About footage of Palestinian celebrations
What is the truth?
Lisa Erdmann
Only a few hours after the asassinations in New York and Washington the
television channels world-wide showed pictures of Palestinians who were
rejoicing at this unbelievable deed.
Now it is said, a part of these pictures were possibly faked, and the
rest are old.
Hamburg –
Children celebrate, a woman with a black head scarf and glasses joyfully
raises her arms, a man jokes with and winks at other passersby here:
A street scene filmed in Jerusalem on 11th September on the day of the
attacks in New York and Washington. Pictures that went around the world.
Pictures that shocked many people. The hunger for information and film
material on this day was insatiable
- so these recordings from the TV channels were sent again and again,
with the words, that these Palestinians had celebrated the attacks in
the USA.
But now, ten days after the attacks the ARD political magazine
programme “ Panorama” reports that there is possibly another truth about
these pictures, that the scene might even have been framed.
The celebrating Palestinians were filmed by two news agencies: Reuters
and Associated Press (AP). The viewers received in the last week just a
few seconds of the material.
In total the TV stations were supplied with about four minutes. The
Panorama ecitor Annette Krüger-Spitta saw the entire tapes of the two
agencies.
“ That is really explosive material”. abei stellte sie Unstimmigkeiten
fest.
The already edited news film had in the last week given the impression
that lots of people had partied on the street. There were no point in
the complete recording where the entire street was shown but only a
small group of people. The supplied material however is more complete –
it showed clearly, that only a handful of Palestinians were celebrating,
lots of others simply wandered past and were not involved.
"The woman with the headscarf said later, that she celebrated for the
camera because a man had promised her a cake” said Krüger-Spitte. The
Palestinian woman has explained, that she was shocked at the context in
which her celebration was shown. She detested the actions in New York.
What is the truth?
Already in the last week excited Mails regarding a similar case have
swept around the planet. CNN had used ten-year old pictures, and with
that evidenced the alleged celebration of the Palestinians.
A Brasilian student, Marcio, posted a mail on Wednesday on the website
of Indymedia, an independent Media Platform. He wrote that he had proof
that the pictures from the American news broadcaster were faked, that
the film material comes from the year 1991 and show celebrations of
young Palestinians of the Iraki invasion of Kuwait.
One of his lecturers has video recordings from that time and has
compared them with the recent reports.
Result: the two pictures are identical. CNN created a feeling against
the Palestinians
Only two days later, on Friday, Marcio back-pedalled. The information
was speculative, the professor cannot prove his suspicions. However,
that was too late. By today many mails are floating through the net,
many editors including us, are getting more and more concerned attention
from readers.
CNN International has officially heavily denied any blame to SPIEGEL
ONLINE
Also Reuters TV, who supplied the material to CNN, quickly undermined
the reproach.
Even on the website from Indymedia itself there was a doubt over the
accusation. A reader claimed that the pictures could not be from 1991 as
one could see a Ford model from 1995.
--
Deirdre Kevin
European Institute for the Media
Zollhof 2a, D-40221 Duesseldorf
Germany / Tel: +49 211 90104 75/ Fax: +49 211 90104 56
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