We have been watching, clicking, listening, reposting news that reproduce fear, terror, anger but most of all… confusion. Few days ago pictures of charred corpses, who were supposed to be victims of Boko Haram during several attacks on the northern Nigerian town of Baga, were reposted by thousands of people on the net. The image was circulating with an “air of innocence” for hours (it still does, as no simultaneous corrector has been invented yet). Famous celebs reposted it with the grace of Amal Alamuddin while visiting the Rock of Parthenon. And then, boom. “Oh, sorry, the image was fake”. Actually, it had nothing to do with Boko Haram, Baga or even Nigeria. The pictures were from a fuel tanker explosion in the Democratic Republic of Congo years ago.
The same image circulated on social media networks on July 2014. The caption back then “explained” (either purposely or accidentally) that it was about the burnt corpses of 375 Christians (in general and with capital ‘c”) massacred by muslims (in general and with lower case ‘m’).
The killings in Baga few days ago were true. Amnesty International described the slaughter as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram. Still, the image was fake. It is not the first time.
In 2012, the BBC used a photograph supplied by an “activist” showing a massacre in Syria. The picture had actually been taken in March 2003 in Iraq.
In the Ukraine, amid a military offensive against pro-Russia militants, the fact-checking website StopFake.org has exposed a number of instances in which images have been manipulated or faked to show atrocities that never happened. One image, which was widely distributed on Facebook, showed the city of Donetsk burning. It had been cleverly Photoshopped.
Images in journalism are not like quotation marks. They are powerful and they have no “sentimental” added value. A mass of dead corpses covered by white sheet , a macabre overproduction from an outdoor mortuary, has nothing to do with the poetic ambiences of Shirin Neshat.
They may provoke fear, anger, but I really doubt if they can really serve as an educational tool. Education means understanding. At a post-modern era, I would like to believe that journalism is going to be interactive (everyone with good intentions has the right to contribute while the world is searching for the truth). It will also be detoxified from images (especially fake ones). It may also need no words. And probably no titles.
