Submitted by Laura Miller on
"One thing that is really starting to bother me is the growing tendency to see news photos from Iraq which have been taken by the American military," writes Michael Shaw, whose website BAGnewsNotes.com analyzes news photos. Shaw points out two recent photos of military operations in Iraq used by the Los Angeles Times. "With the exception of a paper like the [New York Times], however, which can afford to hire stringers or underwrite photojournalists, it seems that the military has been all too willing to fill in the visual shortfall itself," Shaw writes. A reader comments on Shaw's post, "The problem is that [corporate media] don't choose to [hire photojournalists] because it doesn't sell soap powder. As a country the US is very inward focussed. ... The LA Times doesn't have to use those propaganda photos supplied by the Pentagon. They chose to."
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