"Problems with the Media" and Ben Vanderford

original source

You might have seen this story in the news lately about the San Francisco man who put up a fake video of a beheading (of himself being beheaded) and the Associated Press took it as real. Since then the respectable press has been trying to cover their asses and distort the truth to make it look like this guy is to blame for the deception rather than their own stupidity.

To that end the newsmedia who has called Ben Vanderford and interviewed him have been changing his story to suit their spin on the issue. But unlike them - I am a real journalist and I have provided them web space to tell their side of the story unedited. That way the real story can come out.

As of this moment the FBI is trying hard to find something they can charge these kids with to save the press the embarrasment of having #ed up the original story. You see - if they can persecute them - then that take attention off their own coverups, their stupidity, and that the media is just a puppet of the Bush administration. At least - this is my spin about what is going on with this story.

As of right now - this is the only link on the internet to their side of the story and as an advocate of free speech I have decided to give them a voice. I got a call early this morning after they got booted off of their previous host and I decided to give them a voice. They have given me the go ahead so it is now up there. And it will remain the official unedited voice of what it is they have to say.

One of the reasons I am doing this is because I have myself been a critic of the original Nick Berg Video which was heavilly edited and raised more questions than it resolved. In the Nick Berg video the man who is killing berg - al-Zarqawi - has two legs where the real al-Zarqawi only has one. The video appears to have been filmed at Abu Ghraib Prison and Berg - who was in American custody is still wearing an American orange uniform. Aparently others had suspected fakery and were curious enough to experiment on how to fake a beheading. These kids produced a video - obviously not intended to actually decieve anyone - because it was the beheading of the producer of the film who was never a captive - and who's name and address appear in the film.

Had Associated Press done ANY research at all they would have know it was fake. Here's a link to the original video. Can you believe they fell for this?

comments to the article are interesting as well. Interesting to point out are that the consumers have been geared towards one media source such as Reuters and Associated Press for information regarding the situation in Iraq. Truly anothere case of the media misleading the publics opinion.


[edit on 21-8-2004 by websurfer]

Outing and criticising mainstream media is alot of what we do here, and MANY ATS poster/analysts had the same problems with the Nick Berg case and the same frustration with the one sided media coverage.

But even we sometimes have short memories and topic fatigue. I hope this gets some notice and attention though despite that.

Or maybe titles just need the word 'Beheading" in them to get noticed.

I happen to be one of the people who "has a problem with the Berg video". I also have a problem with the fact the media fell for this fake video.

As the blogger stated...if they had taken the time to view the damned thing, let alone analyze anything about it, they wouldn't have fell for it.

And I agree with the point made by RANT's statement - the media is too damned quick to make news instead of report, too damned quick to play the drama card. This was a story with "beheading" in the title and they jumped on it.