Pacific Views

Picture this ...

... a world in which pictures like the one below are taken by photojournalists but never appear in the US media because editors won't run them — either because they're afraid of upsetting the supposedly delicate sensibilities of their US audience, or because they're afraid of upsetting their bosses and/or Dubya's administration.

Crisis Pictures has taken on the job of buying and posting on the web that photo, as well as hundreds of other pictures of the humanitarian disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Africa, and elsewhere that would otherwise go unseen.

What does Crisis Pictures do?

We publish the pictures the mainstream media exclude, every day.

Crisis Pictures is a primary source. Most of the time, if we didn’t buy these pictures, they would not appear on the internet (or any other medium) at all.

Why do we do it?

Our simple message is, "this is happening and we must do something." Our service is a forum for conversation about what that "something" might be.

Crisis Pictures has just lost access to their image server because their financial resources can't keep up with the cost of bandwidth for their increasingly heavy traffic. All of Crisis Pictures' money comes from donations, and if we on the web don't reach into our pockets quickly a vital service will go down the tubes. And only the photos that Dubya and his minions want us to see will be telling the stories.

Go here to make a donation to Crisis Pictures. This magpie just did.

Via Across the Great Divide and The Sideshow.

Posted by Magpie at July 3, 2005 05:07 PM | Media | Technorati links |