We have the unpleasant duty to inform our readers and the international media-monitoring community that recently the AP has been "awarded" the disrespectful title of "The Liar of the Month" for July 2004 by Take-A-Pen.

After being a candidate and runner-up several times in the past, AP received The Liar of the Month award now for its recent 'achievements' in (a) the tendentious selection of a photo (see down below) selectively misrepresenting a Palestinian-ISM demonstration at Israel's security fence, and (b) further, by adding a text to this photo totally distorting what really happened there.

AP's 'Liar of the Month' title is published now on www.take-a-pen.org  and is being translated into most of the 16 languages on our site.
 

AP's huge influence makes their bias extremely harmful. The effect of their frequently anti-Israel biased news text and manipulated photos is multiplied by the hundreds of media organs buying them from AP and publishing them to probably hundreds of millions people. We'll illustrate here Take-A-Pen's choice of AP as The Liar of the Month by four examples.  We'll present also a Reader's Letter summarizing AP's untruthfulness in the "award-winning" photo piece. AP was a candidate and runner up several times for the 'Liar' title in the past before winning the present one . Many readers and media-activists have claimed on several AP products that they were obviously selected and formulated to convey not impartial information but biased views; maybe because the use Palestinian photographers is more convenient and less risky in this region, or maybe simply because Israel-bashing sells better. Before reaching the decision to award the July title to AP, we went through our collection on AP. Though we have too many cases of AP's major failures to do true and responsible journalism, we decided to show you first a very positive excellent product of the professional AP: see below at 1/ a  contribution of an AP photographer disclosing to the world the truth on today's wide-spread lies and staged stories of the Western media, of others this time, AP being on the right side. We show it that we do not forget that there is hope. In the further examples from no'2 to no'5 you'll see AP's lies and manipulations.

Example 1: Crying Palestinian actress, an AP foto, with story.

The above-left is a famous Associated Press photo showing Israeli troops arresting a young Palestinian child. This photo was sent around the world faster than you could say "Israeli brutality!" It was seen at pro-Palestinian rallies and on anti-Israel websites throughout the world as visible proof that the Palestinians are truly innocent victims. But notice the above-right photo taken by the very same photographer just minutes earlier. It shows the same little 'innocent" kid throwing rocks at these soldiers. This picture was of course not sent around!

This method is called, both in court procedures and in media-monitoring: 'Lying by omission' - AP lied to us here by omission of information, which is crucial for the truth.

The Yahoo News page, presents pictures of news agencies, such as Reuters and Associated Press. The press agencies add their comments to the pictures, and both the picture and the text are often printed in newspapers all over the world.
Almost all of the AP and Reuters photographers working in the Middle East are Arabs, what wouldn't be a problem except that they are easily supervised by the Palestinian officials. It is well known that these photographers have to take care not to take pictures that present the "Palestinian cause" in bad light. In fact the reporters and photographers have been accused of cooperating with the Arafat regime.

Take a Pen found by chance an AP report, that included some remarks that were obviously meant for internal AP use only and show without any doubt that the report was presented to the Palestinian minister of Intelligence who added "comments and corrections". In which country articles are still presented to a minister of Intelligence for approval?  AP has no problems doing it. Read the full article here.
 

Example 4:  AP covers up the connection between Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade terrorist group and Arafat

After you saw this, ask yourself: was it the IDF who clashed with peaceful demonstrators???

In fact an honest AP reporter or editor should have pointed out the IDF soldiers exemplary self-constraint, not using their weapons after receiving flying kicks and fist punches into their face from 'physical education' professionals. The AP preferred to lie.

To summarize it, to consider AP as a liar is no fun for us, we feel very sad about it. We'd be the happiest to see a change in the policy of the AP. To see AP as a leading force of truthful information, to know they avoid publishing unsubstantiated anti-Israeli allegations, visual insinuations, misleading headlines and staged Palestinian photographs, even if these are hot sales in the world.

If AP is considering such a change for the future, we'll gladly co-operate by sharing with them our findings, before publishing them, or possibly even without publishing them.

If AP considers instructing self-examinations and issuing corrections in the present case we are absolutely open to publish the corrections, at the same place on our site where we published AP's "Liar" title, exactly as we did to The Guardian of London in a similar case recently, after receiving their sincere correction.

We believe that the leading press agencies have huge part in the anti-Israeli bias in the world, many bad reports are simply based on their biased 'facts'. We caught red-handed now one of them, AP, and it received the 'Liar of the Month' title at Take A Pen, based on one photo-documented distortion of truth by them.

Help us to disclose such lies and liars, send us your relevant findings or letters, for publication on our site.
Together we'll succeed to spread the truth.


Yours,
Endre Mozes
Chairman Take A Pen

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