Correction and a Comment

Blog commenter Jong has pointed out (on numerous occasions actually, but I suppose he wanted to get his point across; for future reference I wasn't ignoring you, it just took time to get the fix made) that a caption on a photograph accompanying one of my web stories about the Tibet protests (here) was open to misinterpretation. Actually, his phrasing was a little more pungent than that:

Mr. Elegant:
You should explain why you use fake/doctored photo in your report “A Tibetan Intifadeh Against China”. Shame on you, Mr. Elegant.

The caption said that Tibetan protesters were being arrested by police. As the story is about protests in Tibet it could be argued that the implication was that the police were Chinese, despite the fact they clearly weren't ethnically Chinese. Anyway, it was certainly vague and we have corrected it and flagged the correction. Thanks to Mr. Jong.

It is interesting to me that Jong should use something that was obviously a mistake as evidence of the infamous Western Media Prejudice. It was the same with the shot on CNN's website that received so much criticism. It was clearly cropped for space as it had to fit into a single column space. And yet thousands of words of invective were poured onto CNN over the issue. Fighting against bias and conscious and unconscious prejudice is something all reporters struggle with. It's helpful when people like Mr. Jong point out errors and we are able to correct them. It's not helpful when people are simply looking for reasons to heap vitriol on those whose interpretations of events they disagree with.