The Huffington Post: a brazen, link-bait rag
On 3 May, The Huffington Post published an article titled "New Photos Reveal Horror Of Hiroshima". To enhance the draw of the story, it added the cynical, link baiting caveat "(GRAPHIC IMAGES)". Jumping on the A-bomb bandwagon, France's "most respected" newspaper, Le Monde, gave the images major play on Saturday, 10 May, publishing photographs of a pyramid of cadavers that it titled: "Hiroshima: What the world never saw." This sparked a nationwide fest of anti-American bile. "These photographs are not in the least surprising, knowing what the Americans are capable of doing in war; Vietnam and Iraq are examples," went a comment on the site of Le Nouvel Observateur. And this from a country that employed ex-Nazis in its savage 1950s colonial war against the Vietnamese!
Then it emerged that the pictures depicted the aftermath of a 1923 earthquake near Tokyo. Le Monde was forced to back down and it printed a petulant apology on 13 May in which it blamed everyone involved, except itself of course. Still, it is sad to see that a once-great newspaper has fallen so low now that it does not even double-check the sources of the photos it prints. (What other untruths has it foisted upon its readers of late?) And has The Huffington Post amended its 3 May post to acknowledge the error that generated so much falsehood and hatred? Of course not. It is a rag. And a brazen one at that.
Comments
I guess I don't understand the French outrage. Many people died in the bombing of Hiroshima. You need photographs to tell you that?
I say you could publish a Spencer Tunick photo, label it "American atrocity", and get the same reaction from the French.
Posted by: Angie Schultz | May 23, 2008 9:07 AM