Media landmarks

Two significant developments yesterday. A French court ordered France 2 to hand over unedited footage of the Mohamed Al Dura incident. Briefly, and follow that link for full information, the image of a Palestinian boy being killed by Israeli troops that flashed around the world in 2000 were, it has been alleged, faked and the TV station knew that full well as it circulated the images.

Libel action followed these allegations and it has been during the hearing of an appeal that the court made this order. France 2 has tried everything possible to keep this footage concealed. If the allegations are proved to be correct, the resulting scandal would eclipse all the fauxtography and rigged phone-in scandals so far.

The second significant development? That last link was to PajamasMedia, not one of the old school mainstream agencies or outlets. Pajamas, an organisation formed by bloggers and of bloggers, hence the ironic name, with some venture capital backing, has actually done the in-court reporting for this story.

How significant that will be remains to be seen, but I predict that when we look back ten years from now, this might be what looks like the moment the wind began to change.