This is an interesting story, I want to make sure I've got it straight. I guess these are basically questions for Jim Heartfield.
The PR Firm Ruder Finn was hired by the Croatian government. They claimed on French TV that they used a particular Newsweek picture and story to brand the Serbs as Nazis and that, in conjunction with their publicity, this was the turning point of Serb demonization. [Transcript of 1993 interview on French TV that Doug posted yesterday.]
Marjaleena Repo says that the story James Harff is referring to in this interview was "built upon" a photo that has been exposed as a fake. [Story posted to LBO a few days ago by Jim Heartfield, and originally posted to the Citizens Concerned about Free Trade (CCAFT) website on March 30, 1999).
Now I assume the photo Repo is referring to is the same award-winning ITN picture that LM exposed as a fake in 1997 and which has caused such a huge brouhaha (complete with libel suit and denunciations of holocaust denial). The reason I assume this is that Repo cites the same Thomas Deichman expose that LM does. But she doesn't mention that Newsweek re-ran the picture from ITN nor that she is re-running the story from LM. And her phrasing that the Newsweek story was "built upon" the fake photo is ambiguous. So I'm left wondering whether Newsweek re-used the ITN photo; whether they ran the story without photoes; or if they ran another photo, whose veracity has not been impugned in its own right.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com