More Media Fakeries...

From Commentary's Noah Pollak's Blog "Contentions":

...Charles Enderlin, the France 2 television reporter implicated in the Mohammed al-Dura fabrication, admitted at a talk at Harvard last night that the famous scenes of Yasser Arafat donating blood after the 9/11 attacks were, like the footage of the IDF killing al-Dura, staged:

Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The blood donation story made headlines around the world. It was reported by esteemed news agencies like the BBC, and photographs of Arafat lying with an outstretched arm ran on many front pages. But the whole scene was staged, Enderlin said. Arafat didn’t like needles, and so the doctor put a needle near his arm and agitated a bag of blood. The reporters took the requisite photographs.

Arafat, it’s worth noting, died in 2005 of AIDS, and it is thus a good thing that he didn’t actually donate blood. Is it possible that the reputation of the international press corps in Israel, especially its European members, could get any worse?

Yes, it could and it did. This hoax is nothing, compared with the al-Dura case of blood libel, which was responsible for so much bloodshed.

Remember Howard Beale's rant:

This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people...

Well, it looks like there is no need for the media to fall into the wrong hands. Looks like it has been a grass roots movement within the media for quite some time now. "A gentleman's agreement" between the self-pitying, ultimate victims for whom no accountability or verifiable truth demands are ever made, and their auctioneers, "journalists" like Enderlin.