Lies Told With Truth

Truth, not merely mockery of truth, means honoring the intention of what is being said as well as accurately reporting what is being communicated.

During my wanderings in many countries, including several Near East, Middle East and Far East countries, I have participated in a plethora of conversations, some with high level executives and government appointees, many more with ordinary people, on the street, in their homes, at their leisure, and in their business establishments. As a result, I have thousands of photos and many hours of footage, gathered with publishing permission. But I don’t use all of them. My commitment to myself, and any person I encounter, no matter their persuasion, no matter the intention of my story, is that if I use a photograph or video clip, that person will only ever be represented in the manner they intended to communicate. It’s easy to do otherwise, and, unfortunately, modern media is saturated, particularly in the political sphere with “gotchas” — lies masquerading as truth. If there are any deplorables out there, most certainly that pejorative applies to those who deliberately take their subjects out of context and represent it as a truth, when in fact, it is a blatant lie. Here is a simple example of how a lie could be told with a true image … meet my friend Ahmud from Baalbek in southern Lebanon (headquarters of the Hezbollah, where the streets are filled with banners of martyrs) …

Ahmud had a serious moment during our conversation, but it was merely a side issue, not pertinent to our subject. I was filming for a documentary and it included analysis of the perennial conflict between cousins, the “children of Abraham.” This image could have easily been used in the documentary to reinforce “hate” and “division” in the region. However, Ahmud had not been making any such point when this shot was taken, so it wasn’t used. The picture is true, it is not altered, but it does not represent the truth of the situation. It would have been easy to tell a lie with a true image.

Meet the real Ahmud, thoughtful, analytical, interesting, and humorous.

In the documentary, Children of Abraham, Ahmud was presented as he presented himself, not with some other agenda. That’s a reasonable standard for all media, all reporting.