Monday Morning Catch-Up: The Big Story That Broke Saturday

Because about half the readers here don't read on the weekends, because they figure the best time to jerk around on the internet is on the boss' dime (and I think they have a point), I'll relink the huge, flaming-skull story that broke Saturday night.

A photographer named Bryan Denton, whose work has appeared in the NYT, posted on a professional-photographer's forum something remarkable. He wrote that, while in Lebanon, he personally witnessed Lebanese digging up dead bodies already in graves for presentation to the media as fresh victims. And, while Denton walked away from such obviously-sham photo opportunities, he says that the Lebanese stringer photographers were lining up behind him to snap pictures.

And while I'm relinking, I'll note this post about the media's post-Katrina promise to stop simply reporting unverified claims and rumors as actual verified news. Which they seem to have forgotten about in their Lebanese reportage.

There's a contest attached to the post-- write your own unverified propgandistic claim for either side in the war, and I will, as MSNBC does, simply publish the juciest ones without any fact-checking. Just straight from your fevered imaginings to the me and then out to the world, via the multiple levels of painstaking editorial fact-checking of the Acewire News Service.

I figure today will be the last day of the contest.

Oh-- and I guess today is the end of the Donation Drive. Thanks to everyone who donated (yes-- thank yous are coming!), and, if you want to slide me a five-spot or, I don't know, a thirty-five-hundred-spot, you can hit the PayPay or Amazon Honor System buttons on the left sidebar.

posted by Ace at 01:28 AM

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