On spiking the football

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground in Iraq were following a convoy carrying Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani when it was struck by an American drone last week, killing Soleimani and nine others, Fox News has learned.

The soldiers following Soleimani's convoy as it left Baghdad International Airport were about a half-mile behind when it was hit by a missile fired from a Reaper drone. They were on the scene within a minute or two and performed a so-called "bomb damage assessment," taking pictures of the scene and confirming that the drone had picked out the right car -- and that Soleimani was no more.

Fox News has obtained photos of the aftermath of the Jan. 3 drone strike from a U.S. government source. Some of the images -- which Fox News will not show -- include graphic, close-up views of Soleimani's body, which is grossly disfigured and missing limbs. Another photo shows Soleimani's body burning next to the car in which he was riding.

You can click through to the ones Fox does show if you'd like. But return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the official approach to killing an International Terrorist was ... how's that again, Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

President Obama has made a "categorical" decision not to release any photos of Usama bin Laden's  body, according to the White House, citing concern that doing so could inflame sentiment against Americans. 

... The president first revealed his decision during an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes." Reading an excerpt from the interview, Carney said the president cautioned that such images could be used to incite violence or as a propaganda tool.

"We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. ... We don't need to spike the football," Obama said, according to Carney.

There is, of course, precedent for not prancing around with images of enemy war dead. One, it's tended to go badly since roughly the Iliad or so. Two, more or less what Clement Attlee said in 1946, when asked in Parliament about whether he favored releasing photos of the Nazis executed at Nuremberg: No, but thanks for asking. Indeed, the Allied Control Commission refused to release the Nuremberg photos in London, citing British public opinion. (They were released to the press of other Allied nations in Berlin; the World's Greatest Newspaper ran them as a backpage spread.) Here's some of what FM 6-27, "The commander's handbook on the law of land warfare," has to say on the topic:

But the football-spiking thing was not the sort of idea that Fox would just let go of, especially when those hard-hitting Internet ads started to show up in Obama's reelection year:

JOHN ROBERTS, ANCHOR: We're back with our panel. We want to talk campaign 2012. In this web video that is creating an awful lot of buzz, it's from Veterans for a Strong America accusing President Obama of spiking the football over Usama bin Laden. Let's take a look.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I can report I directed Leon Panetta...I was briefed...I met repeatedly...I determined at my direction. I called President Zardari...I as commander in chief.

And, lest you need reminding about what an intellectual sleaze Charles Krauthammer was:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This is a very strong ad. And unlike the one against John Kerry, it's not about one story or what happened against another story. This ad simply shows the words Obama has used himself. So the facts are not in dispute. And it hits at several levels. It isn't just that Obama has managed to turn a positive, something he did well, into a negative by attacking, using it as a partisan weapon which diminishes him also but diminishes the solemnity of the event that was national event and he appropriated it for himself. It's the narcissism. And that is the deeper issue here, how they quote Obama again and again using the first person pronoun in his announcement of the event. It's all about me, "I commander in chief", "I ordered", "I did this." What about the guys out there who did it and who risked their lives?

I suppose it's time to see how a Real President comports himself. Here, he's discussing the imminent threat thing with Laura Ingraham on Fox:

Ingraham: Don't the American people have the right to know what specifically was targeted without revealing methods and sources?

Trump: Well, I don't think so, but we will tell you that probably it was going to be the embassy in Baghdad. You saw that happening. You saw with all of the men, very few women, circling it and circling it very strongly and very viciously, knocking out windows and trying to get and they were close to getting in, and I called out the military. They said we'll have it there tomorrow. I said, nope, you'll have it there today. We're not going to have another Benghazi on our hands. And we did a really amazing job. I get no credit for it, but we never get credit for anything, and that's OK. In the meantime, we have the greatest economy we've ever had, a lot of other things.

... Ingraham: Did they have large scale attacks planned for other embassies? And if those were planned, why can't we reveal that to the American people. Wouldn't that help your case?

Trump: I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies. And I think that probably Baghdad already started. They were really amazed that we came in with that kind of a force. We came in with very powerful force and drove them out. That ended almost immediately. But Baghdad certainly would've been the lead. But I think it would've been four embassies that had been military bases -- could've been a lot of other things too, but it was imminent. And then all of a sudden he was gone.

... Ingraham: Are you worried that the Democrats can't be trusted with classified information? Because that's kind of what it sounded like when Pence gave that interview and talked about sources and methods the other day.

Trump: I am worried about it, certainly. I am worried about it. Can you imagine? Here we are, split-second timing, executed -- like nobody's seen in many, many years -- on Soleimani? Can you imagine they want us to call out and speak to crooked corrupt politician Adam Schiff? Oh, Adam, we have somebody that we've been trying to get for a long time. We have a shot at him right now. Could we meet so that we can get your approval, Adam Schiff? And he'd say, well, let's do it in a couple of days. Oh, OK, let's wait a couple -- it doesn't work that way, number one. Number two, they leak. Anything we give will be leaked immediately. You'll see breaking news, we're about to attack in 25 minutes or do something. And by the way, I'm not somebody that wants to attack. I probably could've attacked 5 times, 10 times having to do with Iran. I've been very guarded because I don't want to do that. But we may have to do something. We have to be in a position where we can do it even from the negotiating standpoint. But hopefully it won't be necessary.

This one, though, may take the self-aggrandizement prize: 

Trump: And from our standpoint, let somebody else pay for it. Why are we always paying? We pay for everything. One thing, I moved my troops out of Syria -- on the border between Turkey and Syria. That turned out to be such a successful move, Laura. Look what happened. Now they protect their own -- they've been fighting over that border for 1,000 years. Why should we do it? And then they say he left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil. I took over ...
Even Laura Ingraham has had enough at this point:

Ingraham: They're protecting the facility.

Trump: I don't know. Maybe we should take it, but we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So they say he left troops in Syria. No. I got rid of all of them other than we're protecting the oil. We have the oil.

It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the media follow up.

Elongated yellow tape

OK, fine. I've complained about the infamous yellow crime scene tape before -- but if it's between another round of Elongated Yellow Tape and repeating the same old police-lights photo at the top of the page, I'll take the tape.

Of course, there's always the option of a map. Or, you know, a photo of the scene. Or almost anything.

The universal language

The police tape saga is a topic of perpetual interest here, but I think this one's a genuine first: the generic "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" image illustrating a story from a non-English-speaking country.

A number of other points about the story are worth raising, of course: why it's the top among the day's "top stories"; why "couple" is both singular and plural in the same hed; and why an update that leads with the officially determined cause of death still includes this graf toward the end:

Hotel staff contacted local authorities. The cause of their death is not yet known, but their bodies have been transported to the Dominican National Institute of Forensic Sciences for an exam. The spokesman said blood-pressure medication was found in the room. 

But the generic crime scene tape is really the star of the show. Here's the One Weird Thing You Need To Know about that: Generic photos tend to make people think the writing is worse. (Yes, independently of separate measures that ask directly about the writing.) The effects are squishier and more contingent on perceptions of credibility and objectivity.** If the Elongated Yellow Police Tape has actually become the international symbol of Random Crime For Which We Can't Be Bothered To Find A Photo, though, we've probably turned a corner.

* The AP Stylebook's guidance on this topic is pretty useful.
** Come see us in Toronto in August to hear all about it.

Truth in advertising

Since those downtown hotels are filled with "auto industry executives and journalists from around the world," let's show 'em what big-town journalism looks like. We'll illustrate the 1A story about the water main break and the boil-water advisory with ... a picture of a pot of water boiling!

Just going out on a limb here, but imagine what might have happened if you tried to fit -- oh, maybe, a small map of the affected area in that last little corner of frontpage space. People might think you were trying to inform them or something.

Does it actually matter whether you grab the first stock photo available or try to do something meaningful with the real estate? Watch this space.

Today in framing

Granted, there's lots of other Fox stuff to talk about, and lots of other framing stuff, and no shortage of grammar stuff either. But the morning's top story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network really captures the essence of how framing works -- and how it doesn't.

Got the difference? The hammer hed goes from "Rahm's Spendy City" (captured at 9:24 a.m. Eastern) to "Spendy City," with no change to the Photoshopped image,* a minor trim to the deck, and no mention -- still -- in the 519-word text of the guy in the image (much less "debt-plagued" or "blue stronghold," but that's piling on).

That elision isn't a problem if you're a Fox reader. Rahm Emanuel is in that rare category of Fox villains who can summarize a lead story just by illustrating it (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also comes to mind). When you say "Rahm" (or when, on reconsidering, you merely show him), you've said not just "Chicago" but all the related things that set your Fox audience to gibbering in fear: big cities, black people, feckless liberals, random violence, brown people, Obama, crooked politics, "the Chicago way," black people and the grasping hand of socialist big government. Sounds like a pretty good ROI.

That's the point of framing: "To select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described" (Entman, 1993). Properly done, an image can do all those at once without breaking a sweat -- for the right audience. If you're not a regular Fox reader, one or all of those primes might have blown right past you.** Framing is a contingent theory, not a magic-bullet theory; moral evaluations can be a feature of the message (hence Ahmadinejad could be a "dictator," even though the Iranian presidency is too constrained to allow for effective dictatoring), but they're more likely to arise from the context in which the message lands.  

Whatever else might be going on in the world, you can see why "Spendy City" is the top story: You can't take your eyes off these people for a moment, or they'll be back to digging away at the foundations of everything that made America great. And the great man's triumphant meeting with the Russian tyrant? It didn't have the right definition and interpretation*** until about noon:

Got it? This will be on the final.

If you find Planet Fox a confusing place, be reassured. Here's how A.J. Liebling described a similar planetfall in 1950:

The visitor to Chicago, awakening unalarmed in his hotel room and receiving the Tribune with his breakfast tray, takes a look at the headlines and finds himself at once transported into a land of somber horror, rather like that depicted by the science-mystery magazines. ...  As he turns the pages of the Tribune, the stranger is likely to get the feeling that some of the people and events he is reading about superficially resemble people and events he remembers having read about in the world outside, but he never can be sure.

... The effect on the adrenal glands of the morning dip into the Tribune's cosmos is amazing. The Tribune reader issues from his door walking on the balls of his feet, muscles tense, expecting attacks by sex-mad footpads at the next street corner, forewarned against the smooth talk of strangers with a British accent, and prepared to dive behind the first convenient barrier at the sound of a guided missile approaching -- any minute now -- from the direction of northern Siberia.

Should you be wondering how the Tribune treated the president's role in US-Russia relations in the good old days (Nov. 10, 1941), the cartoon is by Carey Orr. Photoshop, you have to admit, is weak tea in comparison.


 * Given the role of the 1A editorial cartoon in Chicago journalism history, I'm disappointed.
** WAKE UP, AMERICA!!1!1!!!!!!!!!!!!
*** I yield to none in my disdain for heds that play on proper names, but you have to admit a certain appreciation for "Vlad the Emailer."

Slouching toward visual journalism

If you got as far with Thursday's Freep as the jump shown here, you probably knew you were still in a story about refinancing student loans. You might nonetheless have wondered what the huddled masses in the photo had to do with a caption like "Lenders are looking at paychecks and degrees -- not for college dropouts and others struggling to make payments."

The photo appears to be cropped from an AP shot of Feb, 1, appearing at stltoday on March 14 with the caption "In this Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, file photo, Brooklyn College students walk between classes on campus in New York." Apparently, then, at least they're students; there's no indication whether any of them are carrying student loan debt,* or how much, though the image was used there and elsewhere to illustrate an AP story about student loan debt. It's also shown up at McClatchy, repurposed to illustrate coverage of New York's plan for tuition:

Well, at least Brooklyn's in New York. Hard to see a similar connection between a nearly three-month-old file photo and a large chunk of visual real estate in the healthier of the two Detroit papers, particularly when there's no indication of why we're seeing it.

I wouldn't cast this as fake news -- as photos tend to be, it's evidently true about something -- but it does make a lot of assumptions about the audience's interest in guessing games. If the press's crying need is to demonstrate its relevance, someone seems to have made a singularly dumb choice in illustrations here.

* If they had been, the AP caption would no doubt have read "Students carry loan debt as they walk between classes."

Today in framing

And how do the day's events look on Planet Fox?

Former President Obama on Saturday denied President Trump’s accusation that Obama had Trump Tower phones tapped in the weeks before the November 2016 election.

Where's the "slam"? (For that matter, where's the Kenyan?)

“Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.

"Slam" is a go-to headline verb at Fox, so I guess that's a toss-up. But as a mere technical matter, if any slamming was done, it wasn't done by the ex-usurper himself. There is, of course, much more fun to be had:

... Trump does not specify how he uncovered the Obama administration's alleged wiretapping.

That's certainly a lot perkier than what the grownup press could come up with:

President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.

While citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of four tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was “wire tapping” his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. “Bad (or sick) guy!” he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in “nothing found.”

Read more »

Don't let it fall on me

Q: Is it possible that the drooler media are irredeemably racist?
A: Why, did someone suggest that the drooler media were redeemable?

 (Top, 2016; bottom, 2015. Guess the occasion!)

Eyes 1, Brain 0, top of the eighth

And what does Drudge's top story have to do with Sen. Clinton's taste in beer? Let's see!

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.


Oh.

For more on the headline-countdown effect, let's flash back to earlier in the week:

 

It's a wonder some people even manage to crawl out from under the bed, isn't it?

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaste

You can waltz in like Ozzie ...

... or you can waltz in like Harriet, but you can't waltz in like Ozzie and Harriet. That's more or less the problem with the Freep lede here: You can explode over the riverfront, or in the skies, but exploding over the skies is going to be a challenge in space-time.

Nor am I blown away by the choice of illustration for the day's Brexit coverage:

Apparently, photos of the Elizabeth Tower reflected in puddles are already A Thing. I'm not sure if it's the complete irrelevance of "Big Ben is reflected in a puddle in London on Monday as Britain, in line with Thursday's vote, began preparations to leave the European Union" or the overall Magritte-meets-Terry Gilliam vibe, but I'm unmoved. And turning the paper upside down doesn't help.

Eyes 1, Brain 0: Try, try again

Your first question about the story at the top of the Drudge Report on Monday morning might well be: And how many times is the feckless Kenyan mentioned in the 539-word story linked from the headline? ("PAPER: Passengers Allowed to Skip Customs at JFK Airport -- AGAIN!)

Regular readers have probably guessed that it's the key to the right of "9" on the standard keyboard. Here's the Daily News's lede:

Passengers arriving at Kennedy Airport on an international flight were allowed to exit the busy hub without going through Customs — for at least the second time in recent months, the Daily News has learned.

Must have been direct orders from Soros or Huma or Valerie, then.

Bumbling airline and security officials let travelers on American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico, out of the airport on Monday morning without having their passports or bags checked, sources told The News.
Read more »

Today in visual journalism

Hey, kids! How far into this 860-word Torygraph article does the Kenyan usurper make his first appearance?

Go ahead and step forward, all you in the 575-600 bracket. So spare a moment's kind thought for the Torygraph editors who might be scratching their heads at the turn their comments took after the sun rose over Planet Drudge this morning:

Obama steps in and says "Hey. I have rasied are national dept by 10 trillion in almost 8 years, with no ramifications....here is a list of numbers for the chinese that own the country...give them a call"

Obama made his firs "intervention" into Greece's financial problems. How special is THAT? A man who has failed utterly to bring our economy back thinks he can intervene in someone else's. The arrogance just keeps on comin'.

You idiot, do not get us in any more trouble and stop wasting our money. You've made a mess that will take years to repair if ever....so go to your room and wait there until we can replace you... that is all.

Obama has supported civil wars in pretty much the entire North Africa and Middle East regions. His work is finished there, now time to move the civil unrest to Europe.

Drove downtown the other day, saw a group of afro-americans protesting racism. All I could do driving at 30mph was roll my eyes. WHy are the protesting, is someone getting paid? That should be hate speech that they are propogating it for any chills to see and ask what racism is. The democrats are the slavery party.

O-shitstain could not poor pi ss out of a boot with directions on the heel LMFAO

Obama won't want the socialist nirvana Greeks to fail, he'll call $Billions of American Taxpayer money "Humanitarian Aid."

Obama could care less about hard working Americans, his interest lies in black racist thugs, illegal immigrants, and the idiot socialists that are destroying large swaths of Europe.

" … leaders were prepared for a " black scenario" …? Wait a minute. We talkin' Greece or DEtroit?

It's been a while since Drudge brought out this particular trope; appearing below today's front are a couple examples from last September. Discuss among yourselves whether the first or the second level of agenda-setting is better represented here, and whether agenda-setting or framing is better suited to be the One Ring that rules all of masscomm theory.

HAHAHAHAHA watermelon!

How does Gategate look in the cold light of day there, Boston Herald?

And what's the latest on the apologia front?

Boston Herald cartoonist Jerry Holbert took to the airwaves this morning to apologize for a political cartoon that set off a social media firestorm after appearing on the paper's editorial page.

“I want to apologize to anyone I offended who was hurt by the cartoon,” Holbert said this morning on Boston Herald Radio. “It was certainly, absolutely, not my intention.”

... Holbert claimed he came up with the idea to use watermelon flavor after finding “kids Colgate watermelon flavor” toothpaste in his bathroom at home.

“I was completely naive or innocent to any racial connotations,” Holbert said. “I wasn’t thinking along those lines at all.”

Got it. I mean, it's not like the Kenyan's brushing his teeth with a chicken bone or anything.
Read more »

Remain calm. All is well!

Is it just me, or should The Fox Nation* spend a little more time in the Great American Film Canon before it puts together some of its its heartwarming illustrations?

And should it be a little more careful in its copy-pasting?

While liberals “leaders” were crowing for the cameras and pretending to pray, St. Louis conservatives were taking some positive steps toward actually helping the Ferguson community torn up by rioting.

The St. Luis Tea Party is organizing a “BUYcott” of businesses along the now-infamous Florissant Avenue where some of the worst looting took place.

One can only hope the Tea Party is there to ask this "St. Luis" for some photo ID before he votes in the next election.

* "Committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news." Srsly!

Today in visual journalism

A: The number of times Eric Holder is mentioned in this morning's top story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network.

Read more »

Worst active clause of the month

I'm sure this is all true. I have no doubt that a "For Sale" sign much like this one was standing outside a home, and that the home was in Princeton, Ill., and that the sign was standing there on Jan. 22. I'm a little confused about why any of that is relevant to the story on the business front in Detroit that it's illustrating in March.

Really. Wasn't it easier when we had cartoonists on staff to produce the requisite symbols?

Today in visual journalism

What is it about the Daily Mail? Maybe the conciseness of the heds:

Satellite data shows hijacked MH370 was last seen flying towards Pakistan OR Indian Ocean as investigators search pilots' luxury homes and reveal one had home-made flight simulator

... which, once you catch your breath, also offers seven bulleted decks, the last of which is worth noting:

Police raided the pair's luxury homes in upmarket Kuala Lumpur suburb

We have several shots of the co-pilot's alleged house, but none of the luxury home belonging to the pilot. Hence the photo above, captioned thus:

Shah's property would have looked similar to this one and is set in an estate which is said to be popular with high-income earners

Makes you miss the good old days of the Artist's Conception, doesn't it?