AP Goes On Defense For Hezbollah Propagandist
For those of you following the stories/blog postings about the apparently staged anti-Israeli photos coming out of Lebanon are probably familiar with the "green helmet guy." Yesterday I posted video of Mr. Green Helmet (real name: Salam Daher) clearly directing a staged photo-op, yet despite the fact that this guy is clearly a propagandist the Associated Press has decided to act in his defense with this article:
Hours of digging in the blistering heat, eh? Well let's take a look at what Mr. Daher looked like after those long hours of digging through dusty rubble:
Look at his clothes. Does that look like a man who has been digging through the dusty rubble of a collapsed building for "hours?" Sure doesn't look like it to me.
This guy's a fraud, and media organizations like the Associated Press are complicit in perpetuating his fraud and disseminating his pro-Hezbollah propaganda.
The media prides itself on, according to them, wading through layers baloney to get to the truth of a matter. Journalists routinely use leaked government secrets and skeptical reporting to dig deep into what our political leaders are doing. Sometimes that's justified, sometimes it isn't, but either way the techniques journalists apply to the President of the United States, for instance, stand in stark contrast to the way they treat an alleged "civil defense worker" who is accused based on some pretty good evidence of being a propagandist for terrorists.
Green helmet feeds the Associated Press a story, and they're all too happy to swallow it (while admonishing his critics) no questions asked.
TYRE, Lebanon - After hours of digging in the blistering heat, Salam Daher emerged from the wreckage with the body of a 9-month-old baby, a blue pacifier still pinned to its nightshirt.
He held the infant up and, click, an Associated Press photographer snapped another picture of Daher, in his trademark green helmet, displaying a civilian victim of Israeli bombs for the world to see.
Daher, a member of the civil defense for 20 years, has been photographed with bodies of the dead in two wars now — first in 1996 and most recently with the baby on July 30 __ both times after Israeli attacks in the village of Qana six miles southeast of the city.
For that reason, some Web sites have labeled him the "Green Helmet," and accused him of being a member of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, and of showing off bodies as propaganda.
"But that isn't true," he told The Associated Press. He is not affiliated with any party, he said. "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life."
Hours of digging in the blistering heat, eh? Well let's take a look at what Mr. Daher looked like after those long hours of digging through dusty rubble:
Look at his clothes. Does that look like a man who has been digging through the dusty rubble of a collapsed building for "hours?" Sure doesn't look like it to me.
This guy's a fraud, and media organizations like the Associated Press are complicit in perpetuating his fraud and disseminating his pro-Hezbollah propaganda.
The media prides itself on, according to them, wading through layers baloney to get to the truth of a matter. Journalists routinely use leaked government secrets and skeptical reporting to dig deep into what our political leaders are doing. Sometimes that's justified, sometimes it isn't, but either way the techniques journalists apply to the President of the United States, for instance, stand in stark contrast to the way they treat an alleged "civil defense worker" who is accused based on some pretty good evidence of being a propagandist for terrorists.
Green helmet feeds the Associated Press a story, and they're all too happy to swallow it (while admonishing his critics) no questions asked.
