A Lie Will Travel A Thousand Miles

Even though the Boston Glob was caught passing off porn pictures as photos of GIs gang-raping Iraqi women - pictures that didn't pass the most cursory knowledgeable fact-checking by their audience - the damage is done.

A Boston City Councilman is still peddling the pictures.

Taranto says:

A Boston city councilman held a press conference the other day to disseminate enemy propaganda. Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix quotes the press release announcing the event:

Release of US Military rape photographs in Iraq!!!

Assignment Desk/City Desk:

The Black Community Information Center Inc. will hold a press conference on Tuesday, May 11th, 2004, 9:30 a.m. The purpose of the press conference is to release copies of dramatic photos of members of the US Military, gang raping innocent Iraqi women in Iraq.

The press conference will be held in the Curley Room at Boston City Hall (5th Floor) in downtown Boston, Massachusetts.

For more information, call [phone numbers deleted].

Sadiki Kambon
Director, BCIC Inc.The Boston Globe reported on the event, where Councilman Chuck Turner declared: "The American people have a right and responsibility to see the pictures." The Globe made it clear that Kambon and Turner's claims were thin:In the meantime, the Glob's response to the hoax's exposure is coming under fire - from the left:

Boston Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund gets a B-minus today for her assessment of what went wrong with those hardcore porn pictures that made their way into the Globe on Wednesday. The photos were promoted by Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and local activist Sadiki Kambon as possibly depicting US soldiers raping Iraqi women.

Chinlund is utterly believable in describing the comedy of errors that led to a photo's being published in which the porn pictures were visible. In newsrooms, as in life, whenever a mistake can be explained in terms of confusion and incompetence rather than malicious intent, go with confusion and incompetence.

It remains inexplicable how or why Globe editors, once they realized they had a problem, decided merely to shrink the photo rather than pull it altogether. Yes, shrinking did make the porn more difficult to see, but come on folks. Get it out of there...

Quit digging!

Posted by Mitch at May 20, 2004 06:30 AM