Shattered Lens: Part 2 - Abusing Sport for Propaganda

How the wire services cynically exploited the 2010 soccer World Cup to produce negative images of Israel.

Honest Reporting
Media Critiques
06 December '10

In the first part of our study, we examined how the topic of the Gaza flotilla was cynically exploited by photographers and caption writers to draw negative attention to unrelated aspects of Israel. In the cases we profile here, the topic of the soccer / football World Cup is used in much the same way.

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE SHATTERED LENS INTRODUCTION

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PART 1 - THE GAZA FLOTILLA

Our Findings:

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was cynically used by wire service photojournalists to publish photos that impact negatively on Israel.

The soccer theme was deliberately employed as an artificial means to draw attention to Israel's security barrier in the absence of a legitimate story.

Editorialized captions drew a false linkage between sport and politics.

Soccer has recently been in the news as the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively. All of the bidding nations emphasized how sport and soccer, in particular, could provide a setting for the breaking down of barriers.

HonestReporting's photo study, which ran from May 31 to August 31, included the month from June 11 to July 11 of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a sporting festival where images of different nations, cultures, colors and religions coming together to celebrate soccer dominated the international media.

Except in Israel and the Palestinian territories and despite a common love of soccer shared by Israelis and Palestinians alike. Here, wire service photographers set out to portray Israel in a negative light by deliberately abusing the sporting theme to do so.

The symbolism in the first photo of this section is self-explanatory. It is certainly not a spontaneous shot captured by a lucky photographer, but another example of the staging that dominates imagery produced by the wire services operating in the Palestinian territories.

(Read full article)

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