Accordingly, we decided to carry out an investigation - not into the events at Qana pertaining to the air raid. We have no view on these. Our investigation is exclusively confined to the events during the relief effort, to determine whether some had been staged for the benefit of the media (and for the propaganda purposes of Hezbolla). Also, we sought to determine whether the media had been complicit in any staging.
After three weeks of intensive work, with the active assistance and co-operation of the internet community - often called the "blogosphere" - we now believe we have enough evidence confidently to assert that many of the incidents recorded in visual form by the media were indeed staged. In fact, we feel we can go further. In our view, the bulk of the relief effort at Khuraybah on 30 July was turned into a perverted propaganda exercise. The site, in effect, became one vast, grotesque film-set on which a macabre drama was played out to a willing and complicit media, which actively co-operated in the production and exploited the results.
...
If this is worrying enough, of greater concern has been the response of the media and, in particular, the news agencies which employed many of the photographers at Qana. Fronted initially by the Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of Associated Press, they issued an early denial without addressing any of the substantive issues we raised. Other media outlets have since joined the fray, including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, through its website editor, and the Washington Post.
Their tactics have been both predictable and wearyingly familiar. Instead of addressing our substantive points, they have concentrated on details, picking on our errors and false starts, arguing that such flaws irredeemably damage our case. Others have branded us "right-wing", "pro-Israeli" or simply "conspiracy theorists", as if that could explain away the evidence we have gathered.
Then, after we had assembled so much evidence that our case was becoming unarguable, Associated Press mounted a defensive propaganda campaign, issuing a release attempting to make out that "Green Helmet" was some kind of latter-day saint, the hero of Qana. Inexplicably, for photographs accompanying the release, AP chose to dress their hero in blue helmet and garb, which could only serve to confuse readers who were unfamiliar with the issue.
In response, we decided to draw together the totality of our evidence, which hitherto had been scattered throughout this site, and assemble it in one report, updating, expanding and clarifying our findings. We enlisted the assistance of the "blogosphere" and received an extraordinary level of support. This report, therefore, is as much the work of the internet community as it is of this author.
Our purpose in producing it is to provide evidence which will enable us to force the news agencies, and the media which rely on them, to recognise that the media conduct at Qana was unacceptable. And, inasmuch as this is an example of a much wider problem affecting the way the whole of the media operates, we wish to see them address the issues we raise and to reform their operations. Without that, we feel, there can be no trust in the accuracy, impartiality or professionalism of any of their output. This is not only a major inconvenience, but threatens the very health of our democracy. For, without objective reporting, there is only propaganda.
