Re: Greenwald, Scahill step down from The Intercept

Cari Machet:

mirimir - you prove you know what was in the mind of the filmmaker and then prove that the overriding factor in any documentary is absolutely what was in the mind of the filmmaker

could it possible be that the story matters more than the filmmaker - ya think maybe ? maybe possibly ?

plus your 'proposiition' is not evidence - its no excuse for him exploiting a dead body anyway

people when you are an ethical journalist you are careful not to exploit images of children, people that are unconscious etc as they do not have a say in the image content - if this is breeched it is possible they are being exploited but to then place oneself in the frame is just beyond all of that even - that is totally unethical

On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Mirimir wrote:

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On 04/06/2015 02:45 PM, Cari Machet wrote:

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scahill was being filmed in the fucking morgue not at the site of the drone strike - the persons body was on a slab for fuck sake

ambulance chasing times 1 trillion

The point, which you seem to miss, was to make it real for the audience. It would have been better to shoot footage at the site of the drone strike, of course. But I presume that the crew didn't arrive in time for that. Anyway, by putting Scahill in the shot, they emphasize that he was there, and actually saw the victims. That could be CGIed, and so the audience still needs to trust him.

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you humans can give him every fucking award that exists in your arsenal... i wont line up

On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Mirimir wrote:

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On 04/06/2015 12:22 PM, Bethany wrote:

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On 06/04/15 12:59 PM, Cari Machet wrote:

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its not a 'claim' watch his film that was up for an academy award

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there is a scene in mogadishu where he is in the morgue there is a dead body and him in the scene he is standing right next to it - the person was hit by a drone strike

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no journalist gets filmed with dead bodies it is unethical it never happens

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perhaps if you were a journalist in the field you would understand

Absolutely. The first thing any good journalist should think when he's investigating drone strikes and is permitted to witness the examination of a body of a victim is "shit, don't film me here, where I am! So

gauche!"

You're being ironic, I trust.

I rather think that "Dirty Wars" should have shown lots of remains, and sequences of people looking for little burned bits scattered about. Maybe the film did feature too much of Scahill. He's no Michael Moore. But a scene showing Obama receiving some gift made from a victim's femur would have been priceless :)

<SNIP>

Pictures of children, unconscious people, even--GASP--the dead can be perfectly ethical. Indeed, in my view a journalist usually has the *duty* to show their audience what they see, no matter how heart-wrenching or gruesome. Not to show the uncomfortable truth is the true breach of journalistic ethics. Should we censor thousands upon thousands of hours of war footage because the dead soldiers and civilians didn't get a say in it? Or does the public interest outweigh that concern? It's a balancing act, and depends on the broader context. Putting yourself in a shot is different territory, but can be ethical in some cases. One of those cases, in my opinion, is in a documentary showing the journalist's journey. This can be, and in the case of Dirty Wars in my opinion is, as illuminating as the 'ground truth' itself. It gives a context to the images which is otherwise missing and very difficult to understand on anything more than an abstract, cerebral level. Andrew