Flogging the truth

As soon as Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, posted the photograph of a woman being flogged, alongside a critique of the Saudi judiciary, the damage was done.
It turns out that the photograph Roth used on his Twitter account was not taken in Saudi Arabia, but depicted an Indonesian woman being flogged in the city of Aceh. The woman had been punished for selling food during Ramadan. The photograph was first published last May in The Age newspaper in Indonesia.
When contacted by Arab News this week, Roth was rather disingenuous and said he knew the picture was not taken in the Kingdom, but had simply been used for illustrative purposes to accompany an article that criticized the Saudi judicial system. He said that he would take it down because of the “confusion” it was causing.
He should be given credit for removing the picture, but it may not be so easy to undo the effect the photograph has had on the image of Saudi Arabia, which has been unfairly vilified over this debacle.
While it might be clear to us that the picture was not taken in the Kingdom, by looking at the language on a poster in the background and the location, many others would not have been able to tell the difference.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words; it’s easy to share and can have a powerful impact, especially with the advent of new media. Journalists often say that images are never impartial.
“The news is where the camera is,” one journalist has remarked. This is a sad reality because many tragic stories take place away from the glare of the cameras and therefore get little or no exposure. In contrast, less important events get wide and in-depth coverage simply because they were captured on film.
There are many in the media who are not interested in telling the truth but want to push their own agendas and views in their stories. In addition, there is a rather strange tendency by people to believe in negative news, a fact that is exploited by those seeking to gain some kind of psychological advantage over others.
People living in the Gulf region are currently the target of influence peddlers on social networking sites. There has been a proliferation of fake accounts set up to foment insurrection and sectarianism.
Sheikh Abdul Monim Al-Mushawwah, head of the Sakinah campaign, an anti-radicalization, non-governmental Saudi organization, recently announced that many of these accounts are being run from outside the Gulf region.
The organization conducted a study recently on 200 random accounts and found that more than 90 pro-terrorism tweets were posted a minute, or about 130,000 a day. These are alarming figures considering that they are only a sample of the organized attacks launched in cyberspace on a daily basis.
There is no doubt that words and images are being used as potently as guns and bullets on all types of media platforms. Some international human rights organizations have unwittingly fallen into this trap and are serving certain interests. It must also be borne in mind that specialized intelligence agencies operating around the world are orchestrating such attacks for political ends.
Similarly, Islamic State operatives have been producing slick and professional videos to export their ideas into the homes of people across the world. Their brutal tactics are all the more shocking, and elicit much greater international reaction, because they are documented on film.
Yes, this was one image of a woman flogged in a country overseas, which has caused widespread negative consequences. So consider the effect of the other hundreds of thousands of clips, movies, still images and words being broadcast out there on a daily basis to influence people. Truth is certainly the virtue many people adopt during the day and kill at night.