A MADE-FOR-THE-MEDIA MOMENT: Scores of photo-journalists surrounding a rock-thrower, and photographing him from angles that don’t make the context clear. I wonder how many of the resulting images were as accurate as this one in reflecting what’s really going on? This photo — like one from the West Bank that I saw a few years back — provides a context that is sorely lacking in most news coverage. It certainly seems consistent with Kevin Hassett’s observation from Cancun that the media are glorifying protesters who are, in fact, utterly irrelevant to what is going on.

Question: If it’s dishonest to boost the contrast in a photograph to make the sky look better — and some news agencies say that it is — then why isn’t it dishonest to show protesters without the wide shot, like this one, that shows the manufactured nature of the protest? Or to report on a protest without providing the context that illustrates the unimportance — and, often, viciousness and ignorance — of the protesters?

But at least this photo shows giant puppet heads used for good and not evil, for a change.

UPDATE: Good grief — check out the caption to this AP photo:

From left, Samir Shakir Mahmoud, Abdel-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, Mohammed Bahr al-Ulloum, Jalal Talabani, Ahmad Chalabi, and Mouwafak al-Rabii sit in the hall for a news conference after their inaugural meeting in this July 13, 2003 file photo in Baghdad, Iraq (news – web sites). In the five months since U.S. forces rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein (news – web sites)’s rule, the country’s ethnically and religiously diverse people have, in one giant leap, overturned decades of social and political injustice, replaced a brutal one-party system with a multitude of groups advocating a rich range of ideologies and created a free press. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel, File)

(Emphasis added.) It’s like a wave of honesty has broken out! Will Reuters be next?