Photo Captions

CAMERA Staff Prompts Correction on AP Photo Caption

As a result of CAMERA's correspondence with AP, the wire service corrects a photo caption which falsely stated that a Palestinian protester has "passed out" from tear gas fired by Israeli troops.

Updated: AP Caption Writers Take Sides in Arab-Israeli Conflict

July 1 update follows. With AP photographers around the world producing 1,000 photographs of breaking news daily, it is puzzling that AP would resort to distributing old file photos of events that have no apparent connection to the day's events. But that is exactly what AP did on June 19, 2004, re-releasing five file unrelated photos from the Gaza Strip with only a biased caption in common.

Updated: AP Finally Corrects

July 2 update follows. The foreign desk at the Associated Press wire service apparently has no mechanism in place to correct factual errors. Over the last year, evidence regarding more than half a dozen straight-forward substantive errors was passed from editor to editor until it fell by the wayside. This was the case in a June 10 error by correspondent Ali Daraghmeh, who falsely reported that in the West Bank, "Israel does not allow Palestinian officers to patrol in uniform."

Dissembling Demolitions

Why do photo services feature images of forlorn Palestinian children scampering across rubble if the structures were uninhabited?

UPDATED: Finally Getting It Straight at Lawrence Eagle-Tribune

A headline in the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune erroneously suggested that Israeli troops carelessly killed a Palestinian child when, in fact, Israeli troops destroyed the home of a Palestinian gunman who had killed an Israeli baby. Apparently, the headline writer's operating assumption was that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a dead baby, the Israelis are culpable and the tiny victim is, of course, Palestinian. No matter what the articles themselves say.