Editor and Publisher has an article today (hat tip The Jawa Report) which seems to say that they are kinda pissed we bloggers have dared to question the Pulitzer being awarded to those 20 photo’s recently.
Three words for them: Kiss My Ass
The Pulitzer Board anointed 11 Associated Press photographers as winners in the category of breaking-news photography. The award-winning photos were from war-torn Iraq — and some in conservative circles claim the images were, on the whole, overly helpful to the insurgent cause. At least one of the photos raised an uproar from the same quarters when it was first published late last year.
Hmm, well let’s break down those photo’s once again:
? U.S. troops injured, dead, or mourning: 3
? Iraqi civillians harmed by the war: 7
? Insurgents looking determined or deadly: 3
? US troops looking overwhelmed or uncertain: 3
? US troops controlling Iraqi prisoners: 2
? Iraqis celebrating attacks on US forces: 2Equally telling is what the photos don’t show:
? US forces looking heroic: 0
? US forces helping Iraqi civilians: 0
? Iraqis expressing support for US forces: 0
? Iraqis expressing opposition to insurgents: 0
I wonder why we would be upset that no pictures show are soldiers in a better light? I mean, they are over there fighting for our country and all, not that those who awarded this prize would notice. Those people are still worrying about those Iraqi “freedom fighters” being tortured with panties over their heads.
Columnist Michelle Malkin and the popular Powerline blog, meanwhile, returned to the controversy over the widely published AP photo of terrorists executing Iraqi election workers in Baghdad. Malkin asked on Tuesday if the Pulitzer judges were ?ignorant of the controversy.? Powerline called the award a “Pulitzer Prize for felony murder.” Last December it had charged that ?the terrorists wanted to be photographed carrying out the murder, to sow more terror in Iraq and to demoralize American voters. That?s why they tipped off the photographer, and that?s why they dragged the two election workers from their car, so they could be shot in front of the AP?s obliging camera.?
The ?tipped off? refers to the AP revealing that the photographer had been notified that a car bombing had occurred in the area where the attack on the election workers eventually took place. Contrary to the Powerline assertion, however, there is no evidence that the photographer knew anything about the attack in advance or, indeed, that the killers knew a photographer was poised and ready to snap that image. Indeed, according to AP, the lensman was 300 meters away. Salon.com quoted an unnamed AP source calling this charge of pre-arrangement ?ridiculous.?
As Belmont Club wrote in November:
Here was where the killers really lucked out. The AP photographer, though caught at unawares, who definitely had no “foreknowledge” of what was going down and at the worst expected a street demonstration, did not take cover, even as soldiers and Marines are trained to do when shooting starts. He was made of sterner stuff and held his ground, taking pictures of people he did not know killing individuals he did not recognize for reasons he would not have known about. This — in the midst of “30 armed insurgents, hurling hand grenades and firing guns” — as the Associated Press report says. And he continued to take photographs for a fairly long period of time, capturing not just a single photograph, but a sequence of them.
Yeah, could be he was just a lucky guy being at the right place at the right time, that’s a long shot tho.
The most telling couple paragraphs written in the Editor and Publisher article is this:
Mounting the strongest defense of the AP win so far is the Philadelphia Daily News’ blog, Attytood. A photog for the paper, Jim MacMillan, was among the Pulitzer honorees.
The blogger with Attytood is Will Bunch, senior writer for the paper and its former political writer. He was a member of the Newsday news team that won a Pulitzer in 1992.
Today, referring to the war photographers in general, Bunch wrote: ?These are people of remarkable bravery — dodging bullets and crawling through slime on a regular basis for nothing more than the public’s ability to see war as it really is fought.
?The AP’s crime? In so many words, they are guilty of showing the conflict in Iraq the way that it is, and not the way that the conservative blogosphere wishes that it were. The right wants those pictures of rose pedals and liberation parades that Dick Cheney promised them three years ago, and now they’re mad they didn’t get them.
?If reality bites, don’t blame them.?
There ya go, in black and white. The lefty philosophy for all those to see…and these jackass’s wonder why we are upset about the pictures. Idiots.
Check out Michelle Malkin, Powerline, Captains Quarters, and The Baltimore Reporter
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