The Power of the Picture.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Just not always the truth.

You may have seen the photograph. A baby, its ribcage sharp and pitiful, cradled in the arms of a woman, assumed to be its mother. It appears to be a scene from Gaza, and the implication is clear: starvation, caused by siege and cruelty. The image has whipped around the world, a new symbol of condemnation, fuel for the fire of geopolitical outrage.

It is right that we feel pain when we see children suffer. Grief and empathy are human responses to human tragedy.

But what do we actually know about this image?

Is the child starving — or suffering from a congenital disorder, or disease-related wasting? Why is the baby so frail while the woman appears well-nourished? Is she the mother? Where was the photograph taken, and when?

These questions go unasked and unanswered, as people fall under the sad spell of this single, emotionally provocative frame. The image has been used to support claims that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza, but without clear provenance or context, it cannot serve as reliable evidence for such serious accusations. It is true that there is real suffering, and children are caught in it. That must be said, clearly and with compassion. No one who has written about manipulation, as I have, is immune to suffering. I am certainly not unmoved by the sight of a suffering child. But that does not mean I must suspend scepticism. Nor does it make me what I have been called — a “genocidal murderer”, despite my armchair position as a non-military subject of Britain — for the simple act of questioning a viral image.

I am referring to a single photograph because one striking photograph has been shared this week widely, but there have been a number over the months.

Some images of starving children in Gaza have been proven false, AI-generated, or recycled from other conflicts such as Syria or Yemen. Fact-checkers have traced viral photos to earlier wars, and in some cases, distorted features have revealed the use of artificial intelligence. This doesn’t mean there is no suffering; credible reports from humanitarian organisations and verified images confirm a deepening crisis in Gaza, including child malnutrition. But when fabricated or misleading images spread, they undermine trust in genuine reporting and are weaponised by both sides. In an information war, imagery is one of the most powerful tools — and one of the most easily abused.

This is not about denying suffering. It is about understanding how images are used. How they have always been used.

The persuasive power of images is ancient. Before written language, there were drawings on cave walls: hunts, gods, stories of survival and warning. Pictures have always moved us, long before we knew how to move type across a page. But with photography came a new sense of truth — the lens as an impartial witness. It is a lie we still cling to.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a striking image flooded screens and front pages: army trucks rolling through the streets of Bergamo, Italy, loaded with coffins. The implication was horrifying — that the death toll was so high, conventional mortuaries and funeral services could not cope.

But the context was missing. According to the Italian Funeral Industry Federation, 70% of undertakers had gone into quarantine at the beginning of the outbreak. The army was brought in for a one-off transport of 60 coffins. But the image was never explained. It was used and reused across Sky News, international newspapers and government communications — deliberately or otherwise — to create a climate of fear.

Fear, after all, is an excellent tool of compliance.

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In fact the photographs from Italy were referred to in leaked documents from Germany’s Ministry of the Interior which showed that scientists were hired to produce a worst-case scenario in order to justify restrictions on society. In these documents, the State Secretary Markus Kerber wrote of using terrifying imagery — like the suffocation of loved ones at home — to create the necessary “shock effect”. The images from Italy were explicitly cited as useful. Behavioural science met horror cinema to create public policy.

Visual propaganda is not new. In our own living memory, the first Gulf War was bolstered by tales of Iraqi soldiers pulling babies from incubators — later proven false, a fabrication amplified by public relations giant Hill & Knowlton. And who could forget the tragic image of the drowned Syrian boy, face down on a Turkish beach, or the starving Sudanese child stalked by a vulture — an image so haunting the photographer later took his own life? These pictures became moral calls to arms.

Why? Because images stick.

Psychologists call it the picture superiority effect. It refers to the well-researched and consistent finding that people remember images far better than they do words. When we see something, especially something emotionally charged, we store it more vividly and retrieve it more easily. Our minds encode visual information in two ways — verbally and visually — whereas words are usually stored only verbally. Visuals stay with us and they move us.

Mental images insinuate themselves into our consciousness and bypass reasoning. They tap into deep, primal emotions, especially fear, horror, grief, rage. The more shocking the image, the more likely we are to remember it, and the more likely we are to act on what we believe it means.

A study of 9/11 showed that those who retained the most vivid mental images — of burning towers, of jumpers — were far more likely to support aggressive counter-terrorism policies. Seeing is believing.

The danger isn’t only that we remember images, it’s that we believe them, uncritically. Then, the effect is amplified by our cognitive biases. We are social creatures, wired for group belonging. As more people express outrage and horror, others follow. A consensus emerges around the ‘acceptable’ interpretation, speech and action. Dissent becomes risky. A crowd can lose its mind. People like me are labelled “genocidal murderers” for thinking differently.

A single photo of a child in Gaza, widely shared, can sway not just the public mood, but the actions of journalists and politicians — people who ought to know better than to accept every image at face value. Many see a starving child and do not question the well-fed lap it lies upon. They don’t ask why aid reaches the adult but not the baby. They do not ask: is this photo real? Is it recent? Who took it, and why?

This image is not alone. There have been several widely circulated images of ‘starvation’ in Gaza which later turned out to be misleading or faked. The term ‘Pallywood’ emerged to describe staged or manipulated imagery used in this conflict.

There has always been propaganda. There will always be propaganda. The only defence is to train the mind, to be sceptical. To resist the reflex to share. To sit with what we see, and question it. If an image makes you feel something very strongly — anger, grief, guilt — pause. Don’t let emotion make your decisions for you. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those words can drown out critical thought.

Propaganda thrives where scrutiny dies. So, if you do not want to become a manipulated messenger, watch the image. Then watch yourself.