One of the great defenders of truthiness in Honduras is the newspaper La Prensa. Monday’s edition blamed Manuel Zelaya for the death of Isis Obed Murillo, the 19-year-old protester who was shot dead by the army. Readers noticed something slightly odd about La Prensa’s picture of the dead youth:
On the left is La Prensa’s photophopped version; on the right, the original. Having been caught in the act, La Prensa issued an apology. Well, sort of.
Translated:
Due to a processing error, the image published in our Monday June 6 edition of Isis Obed Murillo, the youth who died in Sunday’s demonstration, was distorted (above), differing from the original. We apologize for this mistake, which goes against the editorial policy of La Prensa.
What exactly is a “processing error”?
Postscript:
It might seem odd for a China blog to post photographs from Honduras and mention nothing about the explosion of violence in Urumqi. When I feel I have something worth saying about the riots, I’ll say it. But for now I’d rather shut up and read what other people have to say.
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But for what reason?
It’s a mystery to me, Dan, what was going on in their minds. My guess is it was a breakdown in communication. La Prensa, El Heraldo and La Tribuna have made it their business over the past few years to paint Zelaya in the worst possible light, and now they’re making the same effort to try to justify the coup. Pro-Zelaya protesters are always represented as violent mobs, while pro-coup demonstrators are clean and peaceful and the army is never photographed committing any act of violece. I imagine the picture editor decided the blood would make the army look bad, forgetting (or not realizing) that the article was blaming the boy’s death on Zelaya’s attempted return.
The july 20th edition of the onion is a shining example of model behavior for all western media
http://www.theonion.com/content/index
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