While Democrats across the country are anguished about the bitter fight for their presidential nomination, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't appear to be losing any sleep over it.
That's all the Nevada Democrat would say about it.
Reid also weighed in on the controversy over Michigan and Florida, states whose Democratic convention delegates were stripped when they scheduled primaries before Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, without permission from the DNC.
The DNC authorized only Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to hold nominating contests before that date. Those four states teamed up to demand successfully that the Democratic candidates not campaign in the two renegade states.
The punishment was intended to be symbolic, on the assumption that a nominee would be decided early and delegate counts wouldn't matter.
That has turned out to be a bad assumption. Now Hillary Clinton, who won both states and trails in the delegate count, says Michigan and Florida shouldn't be left out, even though Barack Obama wasn't on the ballot in Michigan.
Both states came to the conclusion last week they couldn't hold new primaries.
"Michigan and Florida wouldn't play by the rules," Reid said. "They're not my rules. They're not the caucus' rules. They're DNC rules. They broke the rules."
Adding delegates for those states, he noted, would alter the number of delegates needed to get the nomination, currently 2,025. It wasn't crystal clear, but Reid seemed to suggest that delegations from those states should get to attend the convention, but not vote.
"Michigan and Florida delegates are going to be seated. They're going to be a part of the convention," he said. "It's a question of whether anything can be worked out to change this prior to the 2,025.
"They're the ones causing all the problems. No one else did. And so they will be seated. They're big states. They represent 29 million people. We want to make sure their delegates are part of the convention that takes place in Denver."
TIME MACHINE
Remember when the United States had to take out Saddam Hussein because he was part of the shadowy enemy that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, and was doing his darnedest to get nuclear weapons?
The Bush administration has acknowledged that the Iraqi dictator wasn't linked to al-Qaida, and inspectors have determined his nuclear program was defunct. But the Nevada Republican Party makes it sound like 2003 all over again.
In a statement attacking the "anti-war left," state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden last week said politicians who advocate "surrender" like to avoid "facts that we, as Republicans, clearly know, understand and will never forget."
"It is a fact that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist and Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism," Lowden said. "It is a fact that Saddam Hussein had and utilized weapons of mass destruction. It is a fact that Saddam Hussein's government paid tens of thousands of dollars to families of terrorist suicide bombers who killed innocent men, women and children."
Nevada Republican Party Executive Director Zac Moyle said the sponsorship of terrorism was a reference to Saddam's funding of Palestinian suicide bombers and to his actions against his own people, which included the use of weapons of mass destruction.
But the statement appears carefully worded to imply something different, said Max Bergmann, deputy policy director for the National Security Network, a nonpartisan anti-war group.
It's accurate to call Saddam a terrorist who used weapons of mass destruction if you're referring to his terrorizing his own people: Saddam in the 1980s used biological weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq. And in an attempt to curry favor with other countries in the region, Saddam did give money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
But Lowden's statement appears to suggest something different, Bergmann said. It reads as though it is reasserting the debunked rationale for the war, linking Saddam to anti-American, Islamic extremist terrorism.
"Saddam terrorized his own people. That is fundamentally true. He was a tyrannical, authoritarian dictator who tortured people and ruled with an iron fist," Bergmann said. "But if you're going to imply that that's why the invasion of Iraq was necessary and urgent, does that mean the United States should be taking out all leaders who terrorize their own people, from Mugabe in Zimbabwe to the military junta in Burma? The fact is that in invading Iraq, we attacked a regime that had nothing to do with September 11th."
War observers on both sides of the partisan divide, including Democrats who supported the war, have largely abandoned those arguments, Bergmann said.
"I'm sort of surprised a party would still be pushing this line that's been so thoroughly discredited. It's like they're living on another planet."
Moyle defended the statement, saying Saddam "paid for suicide bombers and things of that nature. He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. That shows he was capable of that. He was a terrorist, a dictator, someone who was a potential threat, and we believe we are better off having him not in power."
Asked whether the statement implied an association with al-Qaida, Moyle declined to comment. As for whether other cruel tyrants should be targeted by the U.S. military, Moyle said he wouldn't engage in speculation.
RIGHTS AND WRONGS
As a politician who opposes legal abortion but seeks the support of pro-choice constituencies, Harry Reid walks a fine line.
He attempted to explain the balancing act at a Democratic event last week, when an activist asked him about the issue of affordable birth control.
"It's very unusual for someone like me, because of my stand on abortion, but I have the support of all the feminist groups in Washington," Reid noted. The reason, he said, is that he found common cause with such groups in working to stop unwanted pregnancy.
Some Reid critics have questioned his pro-life bona fides, given his good marks from pro-choice groups. For example, in 2007 he got a 100 percent "Pro-Choice Score" from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Reid has said he hasn't had to vote directly on whether or not abortion should be legal, because the matter has been settled by the Supreme Court.
"It seems common sense to me that if we can lower the number of unwanted pregnancies, we can stop a lot of abortions," he said last week.
Reid explained that he was the author of a bill to mandate that health insurance companies cover birth control.
"After I came out with this legislation, I did a national radio program, and a woman from Texas called," Reid recalled. "She said, 'I don't believe in contraceptives.' I said, 'Nobody forces you to use them.'"
That's all well and good, but he didn't answer the question, the questioner, Annette Magnus of Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada, noted after Reid's appearance.
The group is urging its supporters to e-mail and call Reid's office to urge him to take up the birth control issue. Because of an apparently unintentional provision in a federal law that took effect last year, the average cost of a month's supply of birth control pills went from $10 to $50.
Planned Parenthood says that change most affects college students and low-income women.
There is a bipartisan bill in Congress to fix the provision at no cost to government or taxpayers; even opponents of abortion rights don't oppose it. But the bill is languishing because it hasn't been taken up as a priority, the group says.
Pressed on the question later, Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the senator is aware of the issue and is committed to solving it.
"We support a no-cost technical fix to get it done as soon as we can," he said.
By Molly Ball
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Long Journey White Shoes
The Long Journey White Shoes and the Couples Company
Tifa Asrianti , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sun, 03/28/2010 11:42 AM | Music
A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step, a proverb says. For White Shoes and the Couples Company, the fruit of the journey they started in 2002 is now available for their fans to devour in Album Vakansi (Holiday Album), due out early next month.
And by journey, members of the White Shoes and the Couples Company mean a musical one. They promise their latest album will bear traces of all of their influences to date.
Besides, no one would consider the White Shoes and the Couples Company to be trailblazers who have torn down all rock clichés and have built a new musical genre of their own.
In fact, White Shoes and the Couples Company thrive on cliché. The band members’ penchant for wearing wedding party get-ups and their cheeky quoting of Indonesian idioms from the 1970s did much to bolster their retro-is-the-new-cool cred. Sonically, some of the band’s memorable tunes are reminiscent of Indonesian pop tunes from the days gone by, ones that were sung by Tetty Kadi, Dara Puspita and Koes Plus.
Ben Sisario of the New York Times, who caught White Shoes and the Couples Company’s gig at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in 2008, said tunes from the band drew from the 1960s and 1970s bubblegum and easy-listening, with big nods to Neil Diamond, the Carpenters and disco.
White Shoes and the Couples Company at Haight Street, San Fransisco Courtesy of White Shoes and the Couples Company
For their current project, White Shoes and the Couples Company seem to be torn between two options: living up to the cliché or pursuing a new artistic direction.
Lead singer Aprilia “Sari” Apsari said that the new album had a more diverse selection of songs and by having “journey” as its main theme, Sari admitted her band wanted to give fans a new experience and take them on a journey back in time.
“The inspiration for this album comes from a variety of sources, music from 1950s, jazz, pop, ethnic music, funk even traditional Papuan music,” Sari told The Jakarta Post after a photo shoot for their album cover art in an upmarket joint in Central Jakarta recently.
Bass player Ricky Surya Virgana was convinced that all songs in the album, collectively written by band members, were their best shot at songwriting and it would be a filler-free record.
One notable difference in the new record is the presence of old timers from across the musical genre who lent their craft.
“One thing about this album is that we have had collaborations with musicians like pop legend Fariz Roestam Munaf and jazz maestro Oele Pattiselanno. We are serious about this collaboration, and we meticulously arranged the compositions,” Ricky said.
White Shoes and the Couples Company met the two musicians when they shared the bill at the 2006 Java Jazz Festival. White Shoes and the Couples Company were among a handful of non-jazz outfits invited to perform for the festival.
One of mainstays in Jakarta close-knit indie scene, the White Shoes has had high-profile gigs, including one where they performed at the SXSW music festival in March 2008.
Later in the same year, the band received an invitation to play at the CMJ Festival in New York. This weekend, White Shoes and the Couples Company is expected to open for Kings of Convenience for the Norwegian acoustic duo’s gig in Jakarta.
Before charming the international crowd, White Shoes and the Couples Company — a moniker they adopted to refer to a popular trend in the Jakarta Art Institute (IKJ) campus for wearing white shoes and an allusion to the fact that there are two couples in the band — has long been a darling of the Jakarta indie scene.
The band’s debut single Senandung Maaf (Ballad of Apology) was featured in the soundtrack to the movie Janji Joni (Joni’s Promise) in 2005. Two songs from their early period Tentang Cita (About Aspiration) and Senja Menggila (Crazy Dusk) were used as soundtrack for teen flick Heartbreak.com. In 2009, the band was nominated for the best cutting-edge artist at the MTV Indonesia Award.
After conquering the local market, the next logical step is to break into the overseas market. In October 2007, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a record deal with the Chicago-based Minty Fresh record, which agreed to re-issue the band’s self-titled debut album and their second release, an EP titled Skenario Masa Muda (Scenario of Adolescence) for the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia and Japan.
November last year, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a similar deal with Taiwanese label Avant Garden Record that will reissue their debut album for the country’s market.
In spite of the international recognition, White Shoes remains true to their indie roots. When Aksara Records, the band’s record label for five years folded earlier this year, the White Shoes and the Couples Company resisted the temptation to move to the other side by signing to a major label. For the new album, the White Shoes will remain in the fold of a Jakarta-based independent label.
The band also adopts a guerilla-style marketing campaign. Given the high cost of marketing through television, Ricky said his band would stick to the media that has served them well so far, the Internet. White Shoes and the Couples Company is apparently savvy enough to put links to their Youtube videos, MySpace page, Facebook account and Twitter page on their website.
“I think the Internet is more effective for promotion because it can reach our target market and fans. Besides, televisions are already inundated by pop performers,” Sari said.
To promote the new album, White Shoes and the Couples Company will send advance copies to radio stations. These radio stations are free to pick any songs to be on their playlists. In fact, fans will be offered with a chance to shoot videos for the album.
But the band will also embark on the tried and true marketing strategy of performing for gigs.
“We have a plan to do promotion in small venues, so that we can be more intimate with our fans. We plan to tour in cities where we had performed before, such as Yogyakarta, North Sumatra’s Medan and South Sulawesi’s Makassar,” guitarist Yusmario Farabi said.
White Shoes also plans to end this year with a bang. Rio said the band expected to stage a big concert in Jakarta later this year.
They also set their eyes on foreign market by planning to have a Southeast Asian tour. Rio said that the band would have shows in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Of the three countries, Thailand proved to be the hardest terrain for the band.
“From the Internet, we could learn what the American audience expected of us. But for Thailand, it’s a bit difficult, because the language is so different,” Ricky said.
To tear down the language barrier, the band has commissioned electric guitarist Saleh Husein Machfud to learn Thai. Saleh has used this language skill when the band performed their last gig in Thailand, when he sung one song completely in Thai.
“Well, many people say I’m a genius,” Saleh deadpans.
After eight years together, a sense of camaraderie is palpable among band members. Band members even decided to live close to each other in Tebet neighborhood in South Jakarta.
“We are living in the same neighborhood, so we will know what the others are doing or the music they are listening to,” Rio said.
Being in the same neighborhood allows members to look after each other, literally.
“The good thing about living close to each other is that I can ask them to babysit my kids when I got important things to do,” said multi-instrumentalist Apri Mela Prawidiyanti, who is also a mother of two.
Being close to each other could also weigh them down but the friendship that they had formed since college helped a lot to prevent the band from breaking up.
“I think the reason we have survived this long is because we can talk to each other on issues other than music. We’ve been friends for a long time, back to when we’re still in college,” Sari said.
Tifa Asrianti , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sun, 03/28/2010 11:42 AM | Music
A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step, a proverb says. For White Shoes and the Couples Company, the fruit of the journey they started in 2002 is now available for their fans to devour in Album Vakansi (Holiday Album), due out early next month.
And by journey, members of the White Shoes and the Couples Company mean a musical one. They promise their latest album will bear traces of all of their influences to date.
Besides, no one would consider the White Shoes and the Couples Company to be trailblazers who have torn down all rock clichés and have built a new musical genre of their own.
In fact, White Shoes and the Couples Company thrive on cliché. The band members’ penchant for wearing wedding party get-ups and their cheeky quoting of Indonesian idioms from the 1970s did much to bolster their retro-is-the-new-cool cred. Sonically, some of the band’s memorable tunes are reminiscent of Indonesian pop tunes from the days gone by, ones that were sung by Tetty Kadi, Dara Puspita and Koes Plus.
Ben Sisario of the New York Times, who caught White Shoes and the Couples Company’s gig at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in 2008, said tunes from the band drew from the 1960s and 1970s bubblegum and easy-listening, with big nods to Neil Diamond, the Carpenters and disco.
White Shoes and the Couples Company at Haight Street, San Fransisco Courtesy of White Shoes and the Couples Company
For their current project, White Shoes and the Couples Company seem to be torn between two options: living up to the cliché or pursuing a new artistic direction.
Lead singer Aprilia “Sari” Apsari said that the new album had a more diverse selection of songs and by having “journey” as its main theme, Sari admitted her band wanted to give fans a new experience and take them on a journey back in time.
“The inspiration for this album comes from a variety of sources, music from 1950s, jazz, pop, ethnic music, funk even traditional Papuan music,” Sari told The Jakarta Post after a photo shoot for their album cover art in an upmarket joint in Central Jakarta recently.
Bass player Ricky Surya Virgana was convinced that all songs in the album, collectively written by band members, were their best shot at songwriting and it would be a filler-free record.
One notable difference in the new record is the presence of old timers from across the musical genre who lent their craft.
“One thing about this album is that we have had collaborations with musicians like pop legend Fariz Roestam Munaf and jazz maestro Oele Pattiselanno. We are serious about this collaboration, and we meticulously arranged the compositions,” Ricky said.
White Shoes and the Couples Company met the two musicians when they shared the bill at the 2006 Java Jazz Festival. White Shoes and the Couples Company were among a handful of non-jazz outfits invited to perform for the festival.
One of mainstays in Jakarta close-knit indie scene, the White Shoes has had high-profile gigs, including one where they performed at the SXSW music festival in March 2008.
Later in the same year, the band received an invitation to play at the CMJ Festival in New York. This weekend, White Shoes and the Couples Company is expected to open for Kings of Convenience for the Norwegian acoustic duo’s gig in Jakarta.
Before charming the international crowd, White Shoes and the Couples Company — a moniker they adopted to refer to a popular trend in the Jakarta Art Institute (IKJ) campus for wearing white shoes and an allusion to the fact that there are two couples in the band — has long been a darling of the Jakarta indie scene.
The band’s debut single Senandung Maaf (Ballad of Apology) was featured in the soundtrack to the movie Janji Joni (Joni’s Promise) in 2005. Two songs from their early period Tentang Cita (About Aspiration) and Senja Menggila (Crazy Dusk) were used as soundtrack for teen flick Heartbreak.com. In 2009, the band was nominated for the best cutting-edge artist at the MTV Indonesia Award.
After conquering the local market, the next logical step is to break into the overseas market. In October 2007, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a record deal with the Chicago-based Minty Fresh record, which agreed to re-issue the band’s self-titled debut album and their second release, an EP titled Skenario Masa Muda (Scenario of Adolescence) for the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia and Japan.
November last year, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a similar deal with Taiwanese label Avant Garden Record that will reissue their debut album for the country’s market.
In spite of the international recognition, White Shoes remains true to their indie roots. When Aksara Records, the band’s record label for five years folded earlier this year, the White Shoes and the Couples Company resisted the temptation to move to the other side by signing to a major label. For the new album, the White Shoes will remain in the fold of a Jakarta-based independent label.
The band also adopts a guerilla-style marketing campaign. Given the high cost of marketing through television, Ricky said his band would stick to the media that has served them well so far, the Internet. White Shoes and the Couples Company is apparently savvy enough to put links to their Youtube videos, MySpace page, Facebook account and Twitter page on their website.
“I think the Internet is more effective for promotion because it can reach our target market and fans. Besides, televisions are already inundated by pop performers,” Sari said.
To promote the new album, White Shoes and the Couples Company will send advance copies to radio stations. These radio stations are free to pick any songs to be on their playlists. In fact, fans will be offered with a chance to shoot videos for the album.
But the band will also embark on the tried and true marketing strategy of performing for gigs.
“We have a plan to do promotion in small venues, so that we can be more intimate with our fans. We plan to tour in cities where we had performed before, such as Yogyakarta, North Sumatra’s Medan and South Sulawesi’s Makassar,” guitarist Yusmario Farabi said.
White Shoes also plans to end this year with a bang. Rio said the band expected to stage a big concert in Jakarta later this year.
They also set their eyes on foreign market by planning to have a Southeast Asian tour. Rio said that the band would have shows in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Of the three countries, Thailand proved to be the hardest terrain for the band.
“From the Internet, we could learn what the American audience expected of us. But for Thailand, it’s a bit difficult, because the language is so different,” Ricky said.
To tear down the language barrier, the band has commissioned electric guitarist Saleh Husein Machfud to learn Thai. Saleh has used this language skill when the band performed their last gig in Thailand, when he sung one song completely in Thai.
“Well, many people say I’m a genius,” Saleh deadpans.
After eight years together, a sense of camaraderie is palpable among band members. Band members even decided to live close to each other in Tebet neighborhood in South Jakarta.
“We are living in the same neighborhood, so we will know what the others are doing or the music they are listening to,” Rio said.
Being in the same neighborhood allows members to look after each other, literally.
“The good thing about living close to each other is that I can ask them to babysit my kids when I got important things to do,” said multi-instrumentalist Apri Mela Prawidiyanti, who is also a mother of two.
Being close to each other could also weigh them down but the friendship that they had formed since college helped a lot to prevent the band from breaking up.
“I think the reason we have survived this long is because we can talk to each other on issues other than music. We’ve been friends for a long time, back to when we’re still in college,” Sari said.
The Photos Trickled
One by one the photos trickled in; then they came in torrents. On a piece of cardboard draped over a makeshift stretcher, the corpse of a Haitian man lay caked in dust like a powdered doll, a woman's dark legs in capri pants striding past him. In another image, a young man was digging his way out of a collapsed school building after the quake. As he picked his way through the rubble with hand tools, trying to rescue a teacher trapped inside, he looked up at the camera, seemingly unaware that he was flanked by a schoolgirl kneeling lifeless at her desk, her head and neck pinned by blocks of collapsed concrete.
The photos displayed by dozens of U.S. newspapers and Web sites showed tiny Haitian orphans crawling and playing in tent cities. There were hundreds and then thousands of photos of dazed, poorly bandaged victims; of nude or partially nude bodies falling out of pushcarts; of men in surgical masks dragging by legs and arms the bloated dead to parking lot morgues. The cinderblock houses and government palaces had been leveled by a seismic blast; there were images of body parts and screaming people, collapsed grocery stores and looters shot in the act.
It was hell, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, killing an estimated 230,000 people, leaving perhaps 3 million injured or homeless.
American news photographers with digital cameras and satellite phones rushed to the scene. This was not like Afghanistan or Iraq, with countless rules of embedding and the continual threats of bullets and roadside bombs. And editors generally loath to publish graphic and disturbing images saw justification for doing so in the case of the catastrophe in Haiti. This time, photographers and videographers went all out, loading their digital cameras with as much grief, hope and horror as they could bear.
"One of the reasons the pictures were more graphic in Haiti was that the Haitian people wanted the journalists to photograph the dead bodies and tell their stories. They wanted the world to see, to know how horrible it was," says Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography at the New York Times, which initially sent five photographers, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Damon Winter, to cover the disaster.
But Valérie Payen-Jean Baptiste, a Haitian elementary school principal who lost every possession, her home and school, and nearly her family in the quake, was sickened by the images. "I'm tired of it; the photos are too much," she says. "I know that [news outlets] took pictures, and that enabled people to raise money. But what I see is that people in Haiti are really upset. Some view the photos as an insult, a disaster, since we have already suffered so much."
"I'm not criticizing journalists [who] talk about the facts of the earthquake," she wrote in a follow-up e-mail. "But my critique is about the tone of unnecessary pictures and videos that show pieces of bodies, dying people, the nudity of people, or the misery/tragedy of people in line for food and water. Seriously, is this cruelty really necessary to mobilize massive humanitarian action?"
Photojournalists and their editors thought publishing the photos was an essential aspect of covering the news. "At the Herald, and at most publications, I suspect, we try to strike a balance, delivering not only what readers want to see but also what they need to see. We must act with sensitivity but, more importantly, our mission is to create a complete and accurate visual report. In this story in particular, images of death were inescapable. Death was everywhere," says David Walters, the Miami Herald's deputy editor-photos and video. He says the more graphic images made up "only a small portion of what we publish."
Walters works with Patrick Farrell, who won a Pulitzer for his stunningly poignant black-and-white images of the Haitian survivors of Hurricane Ike and other storms in 2008. Farrell once again was dispatched to Port-au-Prince right after the earthquake to document fresh heartache. "I thought [the quake] was the worst thing I'd ever seen. I was thinking if it gets worse than this, it's the end of the world," he says. "You can't tune it out; until you're looking at your pictures on the computer, you're thinking this is a movie, it isn't real."
And he adds emphatically, the Haitian photographs are essential. "I'd say there were not enough images of Haiti; I would say you can never have enough," Farrell says. "People need to know that the suffering continues; they're suffering just living a normal life. They get slammed with four storms, and now this. It's cruel and unlucky."
From the Miami Herald to the Palm Beach Post, the Birmingham News to the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times to the Lincoln Journal Star, the New York Times and more, the verdict was the same. Unvarnished stories and images of Haiti's horrific loss and the rare, miraculous rescue of victims dominated A sections and front page real estate for several days--in some cases, a week to 10 days and more. Many journalistic boundaries were crossed on television. CNN's Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was photographed performing brain surgery on an injured Haitian girl; Anderson Cooper of the same network interrupted his on-the-scene newscast to sweep up a boy in the midst of a violent looting incident. Other newscasters were filmed giving water to the trapped and weeping.
The more images of unimaginable suffering were published, the more international aid poured in.
Photo coverage of the quake touched off an intense debate about the role of the explicit photo--the iconic, bloody shot--in a media world of surprisingly delicate sensibilities. Did news outlets publish images that were too graphic, and too many of them? And what of stark depictions of other disasters, natural or man-made? Or U.S. military casualties? What about victims of terrorism or crimes of passion? Should all of them get the same treatment?
Readers and newspaper ombudsmen in January engaged in spirited exchanges about whether the media had gone too far. And if the public was surprised by the tone and volume of the photography, that shouldn't come as a shock. Because in recent years, for a variety of reasons, powerful, iconic images of national and international events have been harder to find in many American newspapers.
Many dailies have taken a hyperlocal approach to news coverage. News managers say that rather than publish national and international news that is widely available on the Internet, news organizations should heavily emphasize material that they are best suited to dominate: local news. Generally, newspapers with heavily local orientations avoid large-format foreign news photos and packages on their front pages and inside their A sections.
Another factor: Editors, troubled by sinking circulations, are wary of alienating their remaining readers by publishing images they may find troubling. In particular, many news outlets are reluctant to spotlight photos of dead or wounded U.S. troops or foreign civilian casualties.
Yet that doesn't mean compelling photography isn't widely available. News organizations publish powerful photographs by professional photojournalists and citizen journalists alike on their Web sites. The computer is considered a more private viewing arena than the newspaper. Online images may be edgier and more graphic than what appears in print, and they are viewed by millions of people who flock to photo galleries and slide shows.
"The Internet has become the saving grace of photojournalism," says Donald Winslow, editor of News Photographer magazine, a monthly publication of the National Press Photographers Association. "What you see in the daily newspaper today is the lowest common denominator of what a photographer is willing to print."
Tim Rasmussen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Denver Post, says the unlimited space online has greatly deepened photojournalism's ability to tell the story. "We put far more compelling, important news photos for the U.S. and the world on our Web site now than we ever put in the newspaper," he says. "We've built a good online audience for our photography with high-end photo blogs and galleries... There is more emphasis online on national and international news than in the newspaper."
Despite the abundance of material on the Web, the timidity of many news organizations is a source of concern for some journalists. "The truth is that there is a lot of visual censorship that goes on," Washington Post picture editor Bonnie Jo Mount was quoted as saying in a column by Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander. "We're in a culture that censors visuals very heavily. I think that sometimes works to our detriment because we don't run visuals that people need to see."
Haiti, though, was an exception. The country's rich culture and frequent natural disasters have spurred graphic coverage before--particularly photos of naked children who had been killed during the tropical storms of 2008. "In the past I've objected to this graphic coverage, particularly in regards to children," says Leonie Hermantin, a deputy director of Lambi Fund of Haiti, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on Haiti's economic development. "But the earthquake was of such apocalyptic, horrible dimensions that, in this case, it's OK to show what those who remain alive have to deal with. This is what children are seeing on a daily basis. The images afford an opportunity to be there vicariously, and at that level I do not object."
But, she adds, some images did go too far and showed no respect for the dead. "There has always been a sense among photographers that everything goes in Haiti," she says. "You can take whatever shot you want, because the people are poor and the government never reacts with outrage when these images are displayed." Hermantin does not fault the photojournalists, though. The news and photo editors who decide what gets published "should think they are not dealing with animals, but with people who care very much about dying with dignity. People from Haiti want to be buried clothed."
Hermantin and Farrell agree that Haiti's nightmare was beyond anyone's imagining. "You could write a million times that there are 100,000 people dead in the streets," Farrell says. "But if you don't see it for yourself, or in pictures, you won't believe it. It just won't register."
But it did register. It registered with billions, and for some the light it cast on the country and its multiple catastrophes was unnatural. Payen-Jean Baptiste, the Haitian elementary school principal who was trapped with her husband and two small daughters in a car during the earthquake, says she and her extended family needed no more graphic reminders of falling buildings or crushed bodies. "We lived through it," she says. "I have nightmares, and I am fighting these images. I just can't imagine what this is like for my two little girls, who are also dealing with nightmares. Two or three days after the quake, my four-year-old fell down because she was running, and she started crying nervously, thinking that she will die. So I can't understand the purpose of publishing such pictures or watching such horrifying things on TV for entertainment."
Payen-Jean Baptiste doubts that media coverage of the disaster will provide any more than a temporary Band-Aid. "As for helping Haiti," she says, "Haiti has been 'helped' by nations for 25 years... The country is becoming poorer and poorer all the time. Thanks to the media, who will be motivated to go to Haiti in the next decade after seeing how 'ugly,' 'poor' or 'insecure' it can be?"
Many American news consumers wondered the same thing. Christa Robbins of Chicago wrote a letter to the New York Times protesting the graphic images of corpses and destruction published by the paper. The letter was quoted in a column by Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt. Robbins wrote, "I feel that the people who have suffered the most are being spectacularized by your blood-and-gore photographs, which do not at all inform me of the relief efforts, the political stability of the region or the extent of damage to families or infrastructure."
Robbins and other readers suggested that Haiti was considered fair game because it was other – black, poor and foreign. "If this had happened in California, I cannot imagine a similar depiction of half-clothed bodies splayed out for the camera," Robbins wrote. "What are you thinking?" A Washington Post reader wrote to Ombudsman Alexander: "I wonder if the editors of the Washington Post would run pictures of charred smoldering bodies or of a young girl crushed to death if those bodies had been of a 12-year-old girl from Chevy Chase or a 45-year-old father of three from Cleveland Park," referring to two largely white, well-off local communities.
At the same time, some readers defended the use of graphic images. One of them, Mary Louise Thomas of Palatka, Florida, wrote to Hoyt that a photo of a dead baby lying on her dead mother impelled her to cry for an hour. "But run from it? Never," Hoyt quoting her as saying. She added that those repelled by such images "should really try staring truth in the face occasionally and try to understand it."
While Alexander and Hoyt defended their papers' Haitian imagery, arguing it underscored the gravity and urgency of the situation, both also acknowledged that there are multiple standards for choosing photographs. One standard – proximity to readership – prevents most newspapers from publishing pictures of dead bodies with local stories because of the "likelihood that readers may be connected to the deceased," Alexander wrote.
The sheer magnitude of a disaster also influences editors' willingness to publish images of pain, according to Hoyt. During the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example, "The Times ran a dramatic front-page photo of a woman overcome with grief amid rows of dead children, including her own," he wrote. Though some readers protested, Hoyt continued, "the newspaper's first public editor, Daniel Okrent, concluded the paper was right to publish the picture. It told the story of the tsunami, he said."
National newspapers like the Times, however, do not have the same strictures as many local and regional dailies, which readily invoke reader demographics to help winnow out certain disturbing images. "It's weird what offends people, what actually bothers people over breakfast," says Torry Bruno, associate managing editor for photography at the Chicago Tribune. At his newspaper, he says, decisions about graphic photos depend on the circumstances: "In each case, we have long, thoughtful conversations about whether or not publishing is the right thing to do," he says. After the quake, for example, "We published an image of an arm coming out of some rubble with a weeping person behind it," Bruno recalls. It was a decision that Tribune editors felt was warranted, given the depth of the catastrophe.
Haiti aside, there is widespread agreement among those who practice and monitor photojournalism that America's newsrooms have become far more cautious when it comes to choosing photographs. "The kind of enlightened editor I used to have at the Palm Beach Post doesn't exist anymore," says Winslow, the NPPA photojournalist. News editors "today don't want to offend readers, and they don't want to piss people off, and they don't want to take the phone calls [from irate readers] the next day."
Kenny Irby, visual journalism group leader and director of diversity at the Poynter Institute, says the shift in newspaper photojournalism is a byproduct of economic flux. "There is a declining commitment to quality photojournalism today in mainstream media," he says. "But it's not part of a sinister plan. It's the reality of an industry..where print publications are all struggling. Photography is an expensive endeavor; it costs to deploy and support photographers in remote locations."
Another factor: "There is less training and less of the intellectual photo editor thinking about the assignment," says Michel du Cille, the Washington Post's director of photo/multimedia/video. At some, though not all, newspapers, he continues, "the editors are going for the gimmicky photograph over a storytelling photograph. Yes, that's happening around the country, and we are fighting it in the newsroom."
The transformation of American photojournalism didn't happen overnight. "I started to see the change in photo editing after I retired in 1990," says James Atherton, a former Washington Post photographer who took many iconic photographs of U.S. and world leaders, from President Truman to Martin Luther King Jr. to Pope John Paul II to Jimmy Carter. "Newspaper photos are less high quality than they used to be because they're [mostly] feature pictures, not breaking news pictures," he says.
Moreover, Atherton says, the U.S. military has often handcuffed the press by restricting access to citizen casualties in foreign wars in which U.S. troops are involved. An exception: an April 29, 2008, Associated Press photo of the death of a 2-year-old Iraqi child, Ali Hussein, who died in Baghdad during a U.S. bombing raid. The image of a suffocated child appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Although the photograph was beautifully framed and shot – a potential icon – a survey of U.S. newspapers suggests that Ali Hussein's image was rarely used. The photograph, on the other hand, was commonly distributed and published in foreign media.
"It's taken a long time for us to suddenly realize that when we lose soldiers over there that civilians are dying too," Atherton says. "Civilians should be counted."
But even if news organizations wanted to publish such pictures, it's become increasingly difficult for their journalists to get access to them. During Vietnam, for example, "U.S. photojournalists had virtual carte blanche to photograph whatever they wanted," Winslow says. Journalist Malcolm Browne recorded the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc setting himself on fire on a Saigon street in 1963 to protest the corruption in the Diem regime. The image ended up on the front page of the Washington Post.
Photographer Eddie Adams produced the chilling, split-second capture of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a suspected Viet Cong prisoner in 1968. These images, along with Nick Ut's iconic 1972 photo of a young South Vietnamese girl fleeing after a napalm attack, were published and helped change the course of the war.
But the U.S. military altered rules of journalistic access after Vietnam. "The first [Persian] Gulf War had 100 percent photographic censorship; the military kept you on boats," Winslow recalls. "Then the military came up with the idea of 'embedding' in Iraq." Today, journalists who embed with U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq are governed by military regulation limiting where they can go.
U.S. photojournalists went to Haiti to document the enormity of the battered island nation's misery.
For Haitian citizens who wanted their privacy respected, and who seek a long-term international commitment rather than charity, the graphic photography may have a tarnishing effect. "People in Haiti are strong," Payen-Jean Baptiste says. "There are people [here] fighting alone to recover and try to get back on their feet. They are used to dealing with such unfairness. But if there is a way we can stop humiliating them by taking away their dignity while they are suffering, that would be the best help forever we can bring to this nation."
The Miami Herald's Walters sees a broader issue. "Some people, both readers and journalists, find some of the images from Haiti to be gut-wrenching and undignified. These graphic, hard-hitting photos always spawn debate in our newsroom..careful debate. But the fact remains that the devastation in Haiti is gut-wrenching and in many instances, tragic circumstances have stripped away the dignity of victims who were so mercilessly affected by this disaster. That part of the story must be acknowledged in both words and pictures or the story is incomplete."
By Arielle Emmett
The photos displayed by dozens of U.S. newspapers and Web sites showed tiny Haitian orphans crawling and playing in tent cities. There were hundreds and then thousands of photos of dazed, poorly bandaged victims; of nude or partially nude bodies falling out of pushcarts; of men in surgical masks dragging by legs and arms the bloated dead to parking lot morgues. The cinderblock houses and government palaces had been leveled by a seismic blast; there were images of body parts and screaming people, collapsed grocery stores and looters shot in the act.
It was hell, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, killing an estimated 230,000 people, leaving perhaps 3 million injured or homeless.
American news photographers with digital cameras and satellite phones rushed to the scene. This was not like Afghanistan or Iraq, with countless rules of embedding and the continual threats of bullets and roadside bombs. And editors generally loath to publish graphic and disturbing images saw justification for doing so in the case of the catastrophe in Haiti. This time, photographers and videographers went all out, loading their digital cameras with as much grief, hope and horror as they could bear.
"One of the reasons the pictures were more graphic in Haiti was that the Haitian people wanted the journalists to photograph the dead bodies and tell their stories. They wanted the world to see, to know how horrible it was," says Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography at the New York Times, which initially sent five photographers, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Damon Winter, to cover the disaster.
But Valérie Payen-Jean Baptiste, a Haitian elementary school principal who lost every possession, her home and school, and nearly her family in the quake, was sickened by the images. "I'm tired of it; the photos are too much," she says. "I know that [news outlets] took pictures, and that enabled people to raise money. But what I see is that people in Haiti are really upset. Some view the photos as an insult, a disaster, since we have already suffered so much."
"I'm not criticizing journalists [who] talk about the facts of the earthquake," she wrote in a follow-up e-mail. "But my critique is about the tone of unnecessary pictures and videos that show pieces of bodies, dying people, the nudity of people, or the misery/tragedy of people in line for food and water. Seriously, is this cruelty really necessary to mobilize massive humanitarian action?"
Photojournalists and their editors thought publishing the photos was an essential aspect of covering the news. "At the Herald, and at most publications, I suspect, we try to strike a balance, delivering not only what readers want to see but also what they need to see. We must act with sensitivity but, more importantly, our mission is to create a complete and accurate visual report. In this story in particular, images of death were inescapable. Death was everywhere," says David Walters, the Miami Herald's deputy editor-photos and video. He says the more graphic images made up "only a small portion of what we publish."
Walters works with Patrick Farrell, who won a Pulitzer for his stunningly poignant black-and-white images of the Haitian survivors of Hurricane Ike and other storms in 2008. Farrell once again was dispatched to Port-au-Prince right after the earthquake to document fresh heartache. "I thought [the quake] was the worst thing I'd ever seen. I was thinking if it gets worse than this, it's the end of the world," he says. "You can't tune it out; until you're looking at your pictures on the computer, you're thinking this is a movie, it isn't real."
And he adds emphatically, the Haitian photographs are essential. "I'd say there were not enough images of Haiti; I would say you can never have enough," Farrell says. "People need to know that the suffering continues; they're suffering just living a normal life. They get slammed with four storms, and now this. It's cruel and unlucky."
From the Miami Herald to the Palm Beach Post, the Birmingham News to the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times to the Lincoln Journal Star, the New York Times and more, the verdict was the same. Unvarnished stories and images of Haiti's horrific loss and the rare, miraculous rescue of victims dominated A sections and front page real estate for several days--in some cases, a week to 10 days and more. Many journalistic boundaries were crossed on television. CNN's Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was photographed performing brain surgery on an injured Haitian girl; Anderson Cooper of the same network interrupted his on-the-scene newscast to sweep up a boy in the midst of a violent looting incident. Other newscasters were filmed giving water to the trapped and weeping.
The more images of unimaginable suffering were published, the more international aid poured in.
Photo coverage of the quake touched off an intense debate about the role of the explicit photo--the iconic, bloody shot--in a media world of surprisingly delicate sensibilities. Did news outlets publish images that were too graphic, and too many of them? And what of stark depictions of other disasters, natural or man-made? Or U.S. military casualties? What about victims of terrorism or crimes of passion? Should all of them get the same treatment?
Readers and newspaper ombudsmen in January engaged in spirited exchanges about whether the media had gone too far. And if the public was surprised by the tone and volume of the photography, that shouldn't come as a shock. Because in recent years, for a variety of reasons, powerful, iconic images of national and international events have been harder to find in many American newspapers.
Many dailies have taken a hyperlocal approach to news coverage. News managers say that rather than publish national and international news that is widely available on the Internet, news organizations should heavily emphasize material that they are best suited to dominate: local news. Generally, newspapers with heavily local orientations avoid large-format foreign news photos and packages on their front pages and inside their A sections.
Another factor: Editors, troubled by sinking circulations, are wary of alienating their remaining readers by publishing images they may find troubling. In particular, many news outlets are reluctant to spotlight photos of dead or wounded U.S. troops or foreign civilian casualties.
Yet that doesn't mean compelling photography isn't widely available. News organizations publish powerful photographs by professional photojournalists and citizen journalists alike on their Web sites. The computer is considered a more private viewing arena than the newspaper. Online images may be edgier and more graphic than what appears in print, and they are viewed by millions of people who flock to photo galleries and slide shows.
"The Internet has become the saving grace of photojournalism," says Donald Winslow, editor of News Photographer magazine, a monthly publication of the National Press Photographers Association. "What you see in the daily newspaper today is the lowest common denominator of what a photographer is willing to print."
Tim Rasmussen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Denver Post, says the unlimited space online has greatly deepened photojournalism's ability to tell the story. "We put far more compelling, important news photos for the U.S. and the world on our Web site now than we ever put in the newspaper," he says. "We've built a good online audience for our photography with high-end photo blogs and galleries... There is more emphasis online on national and international news than in the newspaper."
Despite the abundance of material on the Web, the timidity of many news organizations is a source of concern for some journalists. "The truth is that there is a lot of visual censorship that goes on," Washington Post picture editor Bonnie Jo Mount was quoted as saying in a column by Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander. "We're in a culture that censors visuals very heavily. I think that sometimes works to our detriment because we don't run visuals that people need to see."
Haiti, though, was an exception. The country's rich culture and frequent natural disasters have spurred graphic coverage before--particularly photos of naked children who had been killed during the tropical storms of 2008. "In the past I've objected to this graphic coverage, particularly in regards to children," says Leonie Hermantin, a deputy director of Lambi Fund of Haiti, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on Haiti's economic development. "But the earthquake was of such apocalyptic, horrible dimensions that, in this case, it's OK to show what those who remain alive have to deal with. This is what children are seeing on a daily basis. The images afford an opportunity to be there vicariously, and at that level I do not object."
But, she adds, some images did go too far and showed no respect for the dead. "There has always been a sense among photographers that everything goes in Haiti," she says. "You can take whatever shot you want, because the people are poor and the government never reacts with outrage when these images are displayed." Hermantin does not fault the photojournalists, though. The news and photo editors who decide what gets published "should think they are not dealing with animals, but with people who care very much about dying with dignity. People from Haiti want to be buried clothed."
Hermantin and Farrell agree that Haiti's nightmare was beyond anyone's imagining. "You could write a million times that there are 100,000 people dead in the streets," Farrell says. "But if you don't see it for yourself, or in pictures, you won't believe it. It just won't register."
But it did register. It registered with billions, and for some the light it cast on the country and its multiple catastrophes was unnatural. Payen-Jean Baptiste, the Haitian elementary school principal who was trapped with her husband and two small daughters in a car during the earthquake, says she and her extended family needed no more graphic reminders of falling buildings or crushed bodies. "We lived through it," she says. "I have nightmares, and I am fighting these images. I just can't imagine what this is like for my two little girls, who are also dealing with nightmares. Two or three days after the quake, my four-year-old fell down because she was running, and she started crying nervously, thinking that she will die. So I can't understand the purpose of publishing such pictures or watching such horrifying things on TV for entertainment."
Payen-Jean Baptiste doubts that media coverage of the disaster will provide any more than a temporary Band-Aid. "As for helping Haiti," she says, "Haiti has been 'helped' by nations for 25 years... The country is becoming poorer and poorer all the time. Thanks to the media, who will be motivated to go to Haiti in the next decade after seeing how 'ugly,' 'poor' or 'insecure' it can be?"
Many American news consumers wondered the same thing. Christa Robbins of Chicago wrote a letter to the New York Times protesting the graphic images of corpses and destruction published by the paper. The letter was quoted in a column by Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt. Robbins wrote, "I feel that the people who have suffered the most are being spectacularized by your blood-and-gore photographs, which do not at all inform me of the relief efforts, the political stability of the region or the extent of damage to families or infrastructure."
Robbins and other readers suggested that Haiti was considered fair game because it was other – black, poor and foreign. "If this had happened in California, I cannot imagine a similar depiction of half-clothed bodies splayed out for the camera," Robbins wrote. "What are you thinking?" A Washington Post reader wrote to Ombudsman Alexander: "I wonder if the editors of the Washington Post would run pictures of charred smoldering bodies or of a young girl crushed to death if those bodies had been of a 12-year-old girl from Chevy Chase or a 45-year-old father of three from Cleveland Park," referring to two largely white, well-off local communities.
At the same time, some readers defended the use of graphic images. One of them, Mary Louise Thomas of Palatka, Florida, wrote to Hoyt that a photo of a dead baby lying on her dead mother impelled her to cry for an hour. "But run from it? Never," Hoyt quoting her as saying. She added that those repelled by such images "should really try staring truth in the face occasionally and try to understand it."
While Alexander and Hoyt defended their papers' Haitian imagery, arguing it underscored the gravity and urgency of the situation, both also acknowledged that there are multiple standards for choosing photographs. One standard – proximity to readership – prevents most newspapers from publishing pictures of dead bodies with local stories because of the "likelihood that readers may be connected to the deceased," Alexander wrote.
The sheer magnitude of a disaster also influences editors' willingness to publish images of pain, according to Hoyt. During the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example, "The Times ran a dramatic front-page photo of a woman overcome with grief amid rows of dead children, including her own," he wrote. Though some readers protested, Hoyt continued, "the newspaper's first public editor, Daniel Okrent, concluded the paper was right to publish the picture. It told the story of the tsunami, he said."
National newspapers like the Times, however, do not have the same strictures as many local and regional dailies, which readily invoke reader demographics to help winnow out certain disturbing images. "It's weird what offends people, what actually bothers people over breakfast," says Torry Bruno, associate managing editor for photography at the Chicago Tribune. At his newspaper, he says, decisions about graphic photos depend on the circumstances: "In each case, we have long, thoughtful conversations about whether or not publishing is the right thing to do," he says. After the quake, for example, "We published an image of an arm coming out of some rubble with a weeping person behind it," Bruno recalls. It was a decision that Tribune editors felt was warranted, given the depth of the catastrophe.
Haiti aside, there is widespread agreement among those who practice and monitor photojournalism that America's newsrooms have become far more cautious when it comes to choosing photographs. "The kind of enlightened editor I used to have at the Palm Beach Post doesn't exist anymore," says Winslow, the NPPA photojournalist. News editors "today don't want to offend readers, and they don't want to piss people off, and they don't want to take the phone calls [from irate readers] the next day."
Kenny Irby, visual journalism group leader and director of diversity at the Poynter Institute, says the shift in newspaper photojournalism is a byproduct of economic flux. "There is a declining commitment to quality photojournalism today in mainstream media," he says. "But it's not part of a sinister plan. It's the reality of an industry..where print publications are all struggling. Photography is an expensive endeavor; it costs to deploy and support photographers in remote locations."
Another factor: "There is less training and less of the intellectual photo editor thinking about the assignment," says Michel du Cille, the Washington Post's director of photo/multimedia/video. At some, though not all, newspapers, he continues, "the editors are going for the gimmicky photograph over a storytelling photograph. Yes, that's happening around the country, and we are fighting it in the newsroom."
The transformation of American photojournalism didn't happen overnight. "I started to see the change in photo editing after I retired in 1990," says James Atherton, a former Washington Post photographer who took many iconic photographs of U.S. and world leaders, from President Truman to Martin Luther King Jr. to Pope John Paul II to Jimmy Carter. "Newspaper photos are less high quality than they used to be because they're [mostly] feature pictures, not breaking news pictures," he says.
Moreover, Atherton says, the U.S. military has often handcuffed the press by restricting access to citizen casualties in foreign wars in which U.S. troops are involved. An exception: an April 29, 2008, Associated Press photo of the death of a 2-year-old Iraqi child, Ali Hussein, who died in Baghdad during a U.S. bombing raid. The image of a suffocated child appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Although the photograph was beautifully framed and shot – a potential icon – a survey of U.S. newspapers suggests that Ali Hussein's image was rarely used. The photograph, on the other hand, was commonly distributed and published in foreign media.
"It's taken a long time for us to suddenly realize that when we lose soldiers over there that civilians are dying too," Atherton says. "Civilians should be counted."
But even if news organizations wanted to publish such pictures, it's become increasingly difficult for their journalists to get access to them. During Vietnam, for example, "U.S. photojournalists had virtual carte blanche to photograph whatever they wanted," Winslow says. Journalist Malcolm Browne recorded the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc setting himself on fire on a Saigon street in 1963 to protest the corruption in the Diem regime. The image ended up on the front page of the Washington Post.
Photographer Eddie Adams produced the chilling, split-second capture of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a suspected Viet Cong prisoner in 1968. These images, along with Nick Ut's iconic 1972 photo of a young South Vietnamese girl fleeing after a napalm attack, were published and helped change the course of the war.
But the U.S. military altered rules of journalistic access after Vietnam. "The first [Persian] Gulf War had 100 percent photographic censorship; the military kept you on boats," Winslow recalls. "Then the military came up with the idea of 'embedding' in Iraq." Today, journalists who embed with U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq are governed by military regulation limiting where they can go.
U.S. photojournalists went to Haiti to document the enormity of the battered island nation's misery.
For Haitian citizens who wanted their privacy respected, and who seek a long-term international commitment rather than charity, the graphic photography may have a tarnishing effect. "People in Haiti are strong," Payen-Jean Baptiste says. "There are people [here] fighting alone to recover and try to get back on their feet. They are used to dealing with such unfairness. But if there is a way we can stop humiliating them by taking away their dignity while they are suffering, that would be the best help forever we can bring to this nation."
The Miami Herald's Walters sees a broader issue. "Some people, both readers and journalists, find some of the images from Haiti to be gut-wrenching and undignified. These graphic, hard-hitting photos always spawn debate in our newsroom..careful debate. But the fact remains that the devastation in Haiti is gut-wrenching and in many instances, tragic circumstances have stripped away the dignity of victims who were so mercilessly affected by this disaster. That part of the story must be acknowledged in both words and pictures or the story is incomplete."
By Arielle Emmett
Car Loans
By Christian Phelps
Used Car Loans
The implementation of new loans every time has made life very easier for one today. Whatever your financial problem is, whether it is an immediate small need or bigger requirements, these loans of various types are right there to make one feel good through monetary assistance. You will, in fact, derive support for buying a used car too and these loans are known as the used car loans.
These types of loans are available for all bad credit holders and at times it works really great as bad credit car loans UK as there is no restriction regarding the bad credit holder borrowers. All those allowed adverse credit records include arrears, defaults, skipping of instalments, late payment, County Court Judgements or IVA.
These loans are generally available in tow forms and it depends totally on you as to which type of loan you wan to go for. The secured forms are the one that will facilitate you with a comparatively higher financial support. Through these loans you will be buying a used car only but still you can at least think of raising your budget. But for obtaining these loans you will have to provide your valuable asset as collateral for sure. The rate of interest in it is low.
The unsecured loans will not ask you to provide any collateral and you can easily draw a supportive amount. But the amount offered in it is smaller than the secured loans and you will also be charged with a comparatively higher interest rate. But the best thing is that for drawing the anoint offered in it you will not have to place anything as security.
The used car loans will assist you through a 90 to 100% support in buying the car of your choice. But for that you must get all documents and the real price of the car ready in front of the lender. In fact, that is not all and you will also have to ensure the lender that the car you are going to buy is not older than 5 years. So, all these aspects and factors of the bad credit car loans UK have made these such popular loans in the loan market.
Used Car Loans
The implementation of new loans every time has made life very easier for one today. Whatever your financial problem is, whether it is an immediate small need or bigger requirements, these loans of various types are right there to make one feel good through monetary assistance. You will, in fact, derive support for buying a used car too and these loans are known as the used car loans.
These types of loans are available for all bad credit holders and at times it works really great as bad credit car loans UK as there is no restriction regarding the bad credit holder borrowers. All those allowed adverse credit records include arrears, defaults, skipping of instalments, late payment, County Court Judgements or IVA.
These loans are generally available in tow forms and it depends totally on you as to which type of loan you wan to go for. The secured forms are the one that will facilitate you with a comparatively higher financial support. Through these loans you will be buying a used car only but still you can at least think of raising your budget. But for obtaining these loans you will have to provide your valuable asset as collateral for sure. The rate of interest in it is low.
The unsecured loans will not ask you to provide any collateral and you can easily draw a supportive amount. But the amount offered in it is smaller than the secured loans and you will also be charged with a comparatively higher interest rate. But the best thing is that for drawing the anoint offered in it you will not have to place anything as security.
The used car loans will assist you through a 90 to 100% support in buying the car of your choice. But for that you must get all documents and the real price of the car ready in front of the lender. In fact, that is not all and you will also have to ensure the lender that the car you are going to buy is not older than 5 years. So, all these aspects and factors of the bad credit car loans UK have made these such popular loans in the loan market.
Psychological Rules And Joint Venture Thrive
Simple Psychological Rules to Help Your Joint Venture Thrive
by: Christian Fea
Many small business owners experience great sales success when they form a joint venture, but some do not. What is the difference between a successful JV and an unsuccessful one? It could be the consumer psychology used to sell JV products and services! Read below to discover some simple tricks to help increase your JV sales.
1. Don't Give Consumers a Choice
Consumer research has proven that too many choices can deter consumers and actually drop sales. Choices can cause the dreaded "analysis paralysis" in consumers. Rather than providing all things to all customers, a JV that markets a wide variety of similar products may do more harm to their sales because consumers would rather make no choice than make a complicated one.
Too many choices may also cause buyer's remorse. Why? Consumers will wonder whether they should have made a different choice and possibly regret the buying decision. So why drive your customers away? Don't give them too many choices. Rather, provide a quality product each and every time that will satisfy customers and give them reason to return or tell others about your JV business.
2. Customers Buy Happiness
Customers will spend more money when they feel good about their purchase. Even if your JV sells a product, the experience that the customer feels during the purchase can make the sale very worthwhile. What does that mean for your JV business? Focus on customer service and atmosphere.
When you greet customers and treat them as friends, they enjoy the experience more than with a sour-faced and bored clerk. Customers always appreciate good customer service, even if they do not acknowledge it in the moment.
If your JV runs out of a brick and mortar location, provide a welcoming place for your customers as well. Hire an interior designer if necessary to create an atmosphere where customers feel comfortable. A fine five-star restaurant is a good example of a place that may create a welcoming dining atmosphere. Consider all the senses, good lighting, creative décor, soft music, and pleasant aromas.
3. Focus Advertising on Your Product
Some general consensuses believe that certain elements in advertising will help sell a product, such as sex or comedy. The belief is that attaching attractive women to a product primarily bought by men will help its recall and sales.
However, researchers at the University College London found that product recall was no better when sexual or comedic elements were used in advertisements on television ads. Therefore, focus on your JV product and its benefits and problem-solving usefulness in your ads. There is no need to spend more money on clever gimmicks that do not help sell a product.
Your JV can experience more sales if you know how to effectively advertise, display your products, and treat your customers. Try these simple yet effective psychological tricks and see how your sales climb.
by: Christian Fea
Many small business owners experience great sales success when they form a joint venture, but some do not. What is the difference between a successful JV and an unsuccessful one? It could be the consumer psychology used to sell JV products and services! Read below to discover some simple tricks to help increase your JV sales.
1. Don't Give Consumers a Choice
Consumer research has proven that too many choices can deter consumers and actually drop sales. Choices can cause the dreaded "analysis paralysis" in consumers. Rather than providing all things to all customers, a JV that markets a wide variety of similar products may do more harm to their sales because consumers would rather make no choice than make a complicated one.
Too many choices may also cause buyer's remorse. Why? Consumers will wonder whether they should have made a different choice and possibly regret the buying decision. So why drive your customers away? Don't give them too many choices. Rather, provide a quality product each and every time that will satisfy customers and give them reason to return or tell others about your JV business.
2. Customers Buy Happiness
Customers will spend more money when they feel good about their purchase. Even if your JV sells a product, the experience that the customer feels during the purchase can make the sale very worthwhile. What does that mean for your JV business? Focus on customer service and atmosphere.
When you greet customers and treat them as friends, they enjoy the experience more than with a sour-faced and bored clerk. Customers always appreciate good customer service, even if they do not acknowledge it in the moment.
If your JV runs out of a brick and mortar location, provide a welcoming place for your customers as well. Hire an interior designer if necessary to create an atmosphere where customers feel comfortable. A fine five-star restaurant is a good example of a place that may create a welcoming dining atmosphere. Consider all the senses, good lighting, creative décor, soft music, and pleasant aromas.
3. Focus Advertising on Your Product
Some general consensuses believe that certain elements in advertising will help sell a product, such as sex or comedy. The belief is that attaching attractive women to a product primarily bought by men will help its recall and sales.
However, researchers at the University College London found that product recall was no better when sexual or comedic elements were used in advertisements on television ads. Therefore, focus on your JV product and its benefits and problem-solving usefulness in your ads. There is no need to spend more money on clever gimmicks that do not help sell a product.
Your JV can experience more sales if you know how to effectively advertise, display your products, and treat your customers. Try these simple yet effective psychological tricks and see how your sales climb.
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