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) …
