Faking news: Media laxity or complicity

Modern technology makes such fakes more sophisticated. Modern communication technology, the Internet, maximised the damage to Prime Minister Abhisit's reputation.

The point is that the damage had been done, and those who did it tried to incite people into violence.

Experts in Bangkok and Sri Lanka have established with sufficient certainty that both the Abhisit audio tape and a Sri Lanka "execution" video were faked. There is however a fundamental difference between the Bangkok "dirty trick" and the Sri Lankan "execution" video.

The damaging effect of the former is very much internal. In the case of Sri Lanka, however, the malevolent intent has surely been to create international opprobrium and possibly instigate international condemnation, even investigations.

Moreover, with the arrest of two people and the police looking for other suspected perpetrators, the Thai authorities have recourse to the local judicial system.

Sri Lanka seeking legal redress against what it perceives as a deliberate attempt to malign it, finds itself having to look to the courts in the UK, where the video in question was first aired by the UK's Channel 4 - which had some months earlier telecast another news clip on Sri Lanka that left many media-savvy individuals wondering about the genuineness of some of its claims.

Most of us do not have the knowledge to comment on the technical aspects of the video. But some have already made their observations.

But there are fundamental questions that don't seem to have been asked. Why has it been assumed that the location of this purported execution is in Sri Lanka? Why has it been assumed that the "victims" are Tamils? It seems that two of the "victims" who are more visible than the others are of fairer skin colour than the average Tamil, who is of Dravidian stock. In fact it is the mud on their bodies that make them darker than they actually are. There is nothing to identify the location as being in Sri Lanka. It could very well be in Tamil Nadu or Kerala or somewhere else.

Moreover, what makes Channel 4 so sure these are Sri Lankan soldiers? The uniform? There is nothing distinctively Sri Lankan in that uniform; such jackets and trousers can be bought in Bangkok or Hong Kong or London.

I mention this because of remarks made by Jonathan Miller, Channel 4's reporter, in his blog. Miller claims that "Steven Spielberg would have had a hard job staging this grim scene", which shows his naivete about Spielberg as well as cinematography. But then nothing should surprise one about Channel 4 any longer.

Had Miller done his homework, he would have known that the 2003 film by director Keralite Rajesh Touchriver - a blasphemous story of the Sri Lanka conflict called "In the name of Buddha" - depicted gruesome and heart-wrenching scenes of war shot mainly in southern India, and there was no Spielberg to direct it.

Even more ludicrous than his Spielberg remark is this: "We were unable to verify the authenticity of the footage but we did our level best to do so and we would not have broadcast the report had we not been confident with the expert analysis we received." He added that a Sri Lankan human rights activist who watched the video provided "forensic insights into its authenticity".

The sentences suggest that the "expert analysis" has come from this human rights activist.

Who would go to a human rights activist for "forensic insights into authenticity" unless they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for corroborative sources?

Apart from the observations made by Sri Lankan experts, how is it that this human rights maestro who has strayed into the field of forensics, missed what are salient points.

None of the faces of the soldiers and victims are seen frontally.

The first man "shot" on camera falls to his right. A little later he decides to lie on his back, perhaps finding the other position uncomfortable.

Before being "shot", when he turns his head to the left, one can faintly see the blindfold is cut round the eye. This suggests not a blindfold but an attempt to cover the face of the individual so he might not be recognised. In any case, why blindfold people who are to be shot from behind?

When the second man falls on being "shot" he falls in a manner that suggests he likes to adjust himself to a comfortable position.

It is peculiar that immediately the second man is shot, there is a pool of "blood" by his head. But the first victim who has been lying there for some time has no blood by his head either in his first or second position.

It is known that the media has been misled on numerous occasions. Political leaders have used dubious material knowingly or unwittingly in order to mislead. Remember the pictures that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell produced before the Security Council in February 2003, based on "solid intelligence", to convince the UN that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction.

In March 2004 the UK's Daily Mirror published photographs of British soldiers purportedly abusing an Iraqi prisoner. They were found to be fakes and Piers Morgan was removed as editor.

It took nearly six years for the media to discover that a woman who made a name for herself by becoming the president of the World Trade Centre Survivors Network was not even in New York when terrorists blew up the buildings.

Space does not permit lengthy references to what has come to be known as the "Reuters photo scandal" which has been labelled "a taxonomy of fraud". But those interested can go to http//www.zombietime.com/reuters.

One can understand but not condone media laxity, for not digging deep enough to establish the veracity of a story. But one cannot excuse those media that knowingly abandon the disciplines required of good journalism in order to push a cause that fit their own agendas and undermine the principle of being a politically neutral outlet.