Per Gudmundson, a columnist for the conservative Swedish daily SVD, writes to inform me that I missed Rage Boy in a recent Associated Press photograph. Says the good Mr. Gudmundson:
The other day Snapped Shot showed us that Islamic Rage Boy is back in the news. Seems like the wire services haven't learned s--t. Brian Ledbetter then waxed around the thought that AP maybe had learned the lesson, since only AFP featured the pictures. Well, they haven't. Rage Boy is back with a vengeance. He's not only seen at AFP - he's also featured in this picture, brought to us by AP, courtesy of photographer Dar Yasin (this Dar Yasin?). The demo, according to the text, took place two days after the previous AFP sighting, but Rage Boy still wears the same shirt. The wire services smell more, though
Click for full AP photo.
Ever since this site discovered Mr. Bhat's follies almost a year ago, he has continued to be used by the press as a symbol of anti-Western outrage for all of Kashmir. But, as many people who've written to me since then have expressed, most of Kashmir is not really all that angry.
So why do the media continue to use the expressions of one extremely small group to represent a much larger, mostly happy population?
Could it really be that our photojournalists are bending over backwards to bring "the truth" to newsreaders around the world?
Or is the industry more interested in prizes and awards?
