Reuters Admits, Pulls Doctored Photos

fragmentate points to a post on PopPhoto which says "Reuters pulled a photograph of burning buildings in Beirut yesterday after a post on the Little Green Footballs blog outed it as digitally manipulated. The photo, filed on Saturday by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, ran with the caption "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs." Fragmentate adds "Another image from the same photographer was found to have been doctored. Whether you're a CNN fan, or a FoxNEWS fan, you have to wonder how much of what we see is fake, or exaggerated."

Fake or exaggerated?

Whether you're a CNN fan, or a FoxNEWS fan, you have to wonder how much of what we see is fake, or exaggerated.

Fake? I'm fairly sure these are the exceptions rather than the rule -- but exaggerated?

Virtually EVERY news report from ANY source is either exaggerated (to reflect the reporters bias) or softened (to likewise reflect the reporters bias). Add to this equation the pressure for ratings and simple stories can quickly and easily become "sensational".

True 'unbiased' reporting is a myth.

If you want an idea of whats going on, read/view as much as you can -- from as many sources as you can. From Fox to CNN, from the far left Pacifica to convervative talk radio. From The Standard to the NY Times. From LGF to DailyKos. My limited experience has suggested to me that the 'real story' is usually somewhere in the middle.

That said, I'd like to address this statement from TFA:

Hajj, who has freelanced for Reuters since 1993 and has been suspended pending an internal inquiry, "denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," according to the Reuters statement.

(sneeze)BULLSHIT(/sneeze)

Bad lighting conditions? Remove dust? Come on. Last I checked CRT and LCDs glow... unless he was working from memory alone without the aid of a monitor, he's a flipping liar.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

True 'unbiased' reporting is a myth.

That may be, but representing photoshop-retouched pictures as images of actual reality is more along the lines of fraud, although it might perhaps be motivated by bias.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Photoshop doesn't do nearly so much to falsify the facts on the ground as does selective framing. Consider, for example, the photos of Firdos Square, and the toppling of the S. Hussein monument thereon.

Re:Bias..

I think you're being more than a little paranoid with what you think you 'see between the lines'. Not everybody has some kind of insidius agenda, whether they be freelance photographers or /. posters.

Listen to the news and take note: When the fighters are contrary to the wishes of US foreign policy, they are insurgeants or even terrorists. When they are for the wishes of US foreign policy, they are soldiers or even patriots. (This brought to light during the Reagan presidency regarding the actions in Nicaragua, it's the same these days.) News tends to colour Hezbollah and Hamas as organisations with dirty, bloody even, hands. The problem is, both sides are about as bad, rather like the tit-for-tat vengeance killing in Iraq between sunnis and shites. It's were everything becomes shades of gray and the news, often in line with Whitehouse wishes (because the Whitehouse feeds much of the media), is coloured in.

Re:Bias..

ENOUGH of this "both sides are about as bad" B-S. Let's see if I can make this clear....

Those who intentionally TARGET children and PUBLICLY celebrate the deaths of children == Terrorist

Those who intentionally try to NOT TARGET children and publicly MOURN and REGRET the deaths of even their enemy's children == Probably NOT terrorists.

Re:Bias..

Listen to the news and take note: When the fighters are contrary to the wishes of US foreign policy, they are insurgeants or even terrorists. When they are for the wishes of US foreign policy, they are soldiers or even patriots. (This brought to light during the Reagan presidency regarding the actions in Nicaragua, it's the same these days.) News tends to colour Hezbollah and Hamas as organisations with dirty, bloody even, hands. The problem is, both sides are about as bad, rather like the tit-for-tat vengeance killing in Iraq between sunnis and shites. It's were everything becomes shades of gray and the news, often in line with Whitehouse wishes (because the Whitehouse feeds much of the media), is coloured in.

I have an even simpler definition for you:

Initiating conflicts, intentionally targeting civilians, intentionally putting civilians in harms way = terrorism.

Responding to aggression, making best efforts to not kill civilians even though foe dresses as and hides among civilians = not terrorism.

The news tends to cover Hezbollah with dirty and bloody hands because, well, they do. They intentionally locate their weapons in civilian locations such as apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals. They launch anti-personnel rockets towards population centers. When Israel responds, with inevitable civilian casualties, they are decried as evil baby killers. The media perpetuates this no-win situation by gobbling up every photo-op, whether real or doctored, because it forwards their agenda and/or ratings. How you could claim that the media is in the White house's pocket, especially in light of stories such as this one, is beyond me.

Re:Bias..

"both sides are about as bad"

I guess I see a serious moral difference between a side that drops leaflets warning civilians of incoming attacks and encouraging them to move/leave, so that military targets and weapons caches can be destroyed with a minimum of civilian casualties, and a side that straps bombs to 15 year olds and sends them into a Sbarro's to blow up 40 people who are trying to enjoy lunch.

Perhaps you don't see any difference, and that's your prerogative, but that kind of thinking ("we're no better because we do rotten stuff too") is exactly what is going to lead to the downfall of Western civilization. What scares me even more is that a lot of people think we deserve it. What scares me even more than THAT is that the people who think we deserve it are almost without exception educated an enlightened liberal thinkers who cherish the progress made in the name of liberty - desegregation, women's sufferage, the gradual triumphs of the gay rights movement, etc. These things would fly right out the window across the globe in the absence of countries like the U.K. and U.S.

Re:Bias..

This particular photographer has reputedly commited fraud before. I'll accept that *his* motive was financial gain. What was Reuter's motive for accepting work from a know producer of fraudulent news?

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

If you look at the "before" and "after" photos, you can clearly see that the photographer manipulated it to show more smoke (and did a poor job of "smoke cut and paste"). There was a lot of smoke in the original, so you wonder why he felt he needed to "improve" it.

Reuters says it normally sends all photos to their Singapore office to check for manipulation but this one slipped through. Looks bad but not quite the same level of deception as the hack who put Kerry and Fonda in the same photo during the last election cycle.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

I smell bullshit. Any 14 year old with 2 months experience could have made a better job. And now you say such photo made through the editors AND another guy who, as distracted as he could be, failed to notice an obvious fake? Also, wasn't there enough smok

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Virtually EVERY news report from ANY source is either exaggerated
True 'unbiased' reporting is a myth.

You're conflating two issues here. Manipulating the evidence isn't bias, it's manipulating the evidence, a far more heinous crime. Two different repor

Terrorist vs. Freedom Fighter

I wanted to put in my two cents here and say that I agree.

Part of the problem seems to be that we've taken to using the word "terrorist" so broadly, and with such a stigma attached to it, that we've forgotten what it actually means. A terrorist is a person who intentionally attacks a civilian population, usually with the immediate goal of causing mass casualties, with the ultimate goal of accomplishing a political end by causing terror and fear in said civilian population.

To say "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" is a lie; at the very least, it assumes that one man is either deluded, or misunderstanding the nature of terrorism. (At the very least it is simplistic: a person could be both a freedom fighter and a terrorist, or neither, or either one singly.)

To be a "terrorist" doesn't imply any particular political ideology. You could be a "Zionist" terrorist as easily as you could be an "Islamo-facist" one. Being a terrorist also doesn't require that someone be disconnected from a government, either; I think you could make a fairly convincing argument that a lot of warfare and accepted strategy in World War Two falls squarely into the realm of terrorism: bombing a city for its "morale effect" is simply terrorism by another name. (It's worth pointing out that most countries have rejected these tactics, and at the same time the word 'terrorist' has become more stigmatized as it becomes a less tolerated practice.)

Just because a word is used politically doesn't immediately strip it of all factual meaning; if that were the case, we wouldn't have any language left.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Are you saying that Israeli soldiers locate their bases away from civilians and never mingle with the population? The truth is that Israel has the power to take the fight to Arab homes, if the Arabs had FA-18's with laser guided bombs they might just do the reverse. Also have a look at the body count and note the ratio of combatants/civilians dead on both sides.

You can't say that civilian areas are legit military targets because a soldier may be in the area. I am saying that Israel does not go into neighborhoods to launch artillery shells from.
And No, I fully believe that if the Hezbolla had F-16's with LGB's, they would attack civilian areas. How accurate is a "suicide bomber"? More so than a lazer guided bomb. A LGB can hit a building, maybe get lucky and knock down a door or window. A "suicide bomber" can hit a closet, bathroom, kitchen, wherever a man (or child) can stand, they can hit. Do these suicide bombers go after military targets? No. They hit teen hangouts, crowded buses and campus cafeterias. They don't even go after government buildings or wait until the buses are empty. They hit them during rush hour to cause the maximum number of civilian deaths possible. It's not a matter of accuracy, it's a matter of mind-set. Hezbolla and other jihad organizations like them are terrorists, pure and simple.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

True 'unbiased' reporting is a myth.

And 'biased reporting' is an overworn, inflammatory cliche drummed up by the conservative right some years ago in reaction the perception that the Fifth Estate was unfair to their ideals and goals and should be beholden

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

As for those who do the reporting, I'd wager that anyone who spends years in an institution of higher learning so they can earn (yes, "earn") a degree in journalism has probably learned something during those years that the rest of us sitting on our couches didn't. I'd also wager that after graduating, most take up employment in an organisation that has a history and tradition that extends farther than recent memory. If you don't believe any of that counts for something, then I guess it's both fair and logical to assume you don't count for anything, either.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow where ideals have been beaten with a bloody claw hammer and your hopeful world really doesn't exist.

News reporting organizations don't exist for the common good of mankind in today's world as they have an agenda at hand. They exist to earn revenue or generate a larger audience. The latter form works on the basis of creating a ratings foot hold in order to bolster post and pre-ceeding programming.

Though after all has been said I wonder if you have actually worked in news/journalism. (I know I have!)

I was going to go after some other points, but really your post was just riddled with jabs and pokes at the previous poster. I'm not sure I've seen that many negative associations since last nights Fox broadcast. (Actually, I don't watch it, but I thought it was funny.)

In closing, I propose a new moderation tag be put in place after reading your recent post: eloquent troll.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, CBC is famous for reporting briefly both sides of the story, then doing a deeper story about the family of the palestinan suicide bomber, and the terrible poverty that drove him to do what he did. I have _never_ seen, on CBC, a deeper story about the family of the Israelites that were riding the bus to work, shopping at the mall, or partying at the disco. That's not biased?!?

To play devil's advocate, a deeper story about the families of the victims wouldn't be all that interesting. After all, they're just ordinary people going about their daily lives. That their families are saddened and that they led interesting lives is expected. The really interesting thing is the story behind someone who'd go to such a length to commit an atrocious act... to show that not everything is completely black & white. If you want balance, it would make a great contrast if they showed how the innocents aren't entirely innocent just as how the evil person isn't entirely evil.
 

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

If you want balance, it would make a great contrast if they showed how the innocents aren't entirely innocent just as how the evil person isn't entirely evil.

That's not balanced...you're marginalizing the evil of one person and marginalizing the innocence of another. In effect, you're excusing the suicide bomber by saying he's not so evil and, besides, his victims aren't exactly innocent.

Balance would be reporting the freaking story without opinion. Palestinian suicide bomber kills X Israelis on a bus. That's the story, plain and simple. When/If Israel strikes back at Palestine, cover that the same way: Israel sends ground troops into Palestinian territory. Cut it with the editorializing, that's what we're all complaining about in this thread.

--trb

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Your view of what is biased is of course dependent on what bias you already hold. Such is the nature of how we view truth. That you think the BBC is unbiased just tells me that you think their view of the world is the closest to yours.

I like to think a better measure of a news organization's worth is the value of news they bring to the viewer. The story about the Palestinian suicide bomber's family is worthwhile if it's done well. I'd say that its definately news if people from the same background continually blow themselves up to further some nebulous goal. What I mean by 'done well' is: did it explore different angles of a story. How did he/she get recruited? Did they get any fame/infame from the act? How do the rest of the family feel about what happened? What goal were they trying to acomplish, specifically how does killing oneself and a few disco kids further a cause? Their side of the story is very interesting no matter what your view of the world is. What's not interesting is being told what to think about an event without substantial information.

All news is biased. I would say that the BBC is amazingly biased, but that their style of reporting is excellent and interesting. Their view of the world is completely and utterly different than say someone living in Belize City, Sau Paolo, or Mumbai. What I don't like about FOX is not that they are biased, but that they just keep repeating the same story with 12 words over and over again. Their news is cheap propaganda. I find no substance in it; but then again most TV news is like that. Newspapers can be a little better, but often are not. The best stories I find are often pretty late in the news cycle after most people have lost their attention span. Documentaries by film makers, in depth stories in magazines like Soldier of Fortune and Playboy, and now-a-days some blogs have some great information. Business news is also extremely interesting because money is what drives almost all the decisions in the Western world.

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

A video about staged "conflict" scenese going on in Israel with regards to the Palestinians:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3330818905 742409257&q=palestine+staged+video [google.com]

An interesting watch...

Re:Fake or exaggerated?

Once someone decides to hate the USA, one excuse is as good as another.

Well then it's proven:

Beruit is not being bombed!

Is Reuters complicit?

The photo was so obviously manipulated as to be laughable. ANYONE who's ever used the Clone Brush tool would immediately recognize it as having been manipulated, and anyone who's completely unfamiliar with digital photography would still question the regularity of the blobs of smoke.

Sure, this photographer is at fault, and you can make assumptions about his political motives for photoshopping this image. But what's worse is how did Reuters let such a piece of crap into the system? The guys on SomethingAwful [somethingawful.com] or Worth 1000 [worth1000.com] all do a much better job, and that's just for the glory of the contest. They're not trying to pass their stuff off as "news." Even the guys at Fark [fark.com] aren't this bad (not even Heamer :-) No, this photoshop was of "The Daily Show" quality -- comically bad.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that Reuters isn't actually looking at the images that come in the door. Even if someone at Reuters had the same political agenda as the photographer, he should have had the good sense to deny that picture because the photoshopping was so obvious. Actually, neither conclusion is good news for Reuters at all.

Re:OT: Canadians?

It was done so badly that I could tell it was clone tooled by looking at the thumbnail of the picture.

Sanity check then

I'm assuming that (since you only objected to one point), that you agree with the rest and will focus on the one you singled out:

You insist I do fact-checking on this:

Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.

It isn't possible to fact-check a bald assertion, because there are no facts there to check. He's put forth a theory; it's on him to prove it.

It certainly is possible to fact check a bald assertion. Of all the things you might want to fact check, a bald assertion is perhaps the easiest. If I say something like "The bulk of Portugal lies to the west of Spain" you will find it much easier to fact check than if I say something like "How like a flower my true love blooms."

Of course, this doesn't always mean that we have the resources to do it. Claims like "The far side of Jupiter is about -170 degrees Celsius" or "Arnold Schwarzenegger wears pink thong underwear" can be hard (expensive, risky, time consuming) to verify. So instead you can do the next best thing, and sanity check the assertion, from multiple directions.

• Do we need an explanation at all?

  Yes. Everyone agrees that the documents exist, and no one has proven them to be authentic.

• Does the proposed explanation fit the known facts?

  Yes.

• Is there an superior/generally accepted alternative explanation

  No, not really. The other proposed explanations (e.g. Terry McCallef(sp) did it) are even weaker.

• Does the proposed explanation require anyone to act out of character, or against their own interests?

  No, not at all. In fact, the two prime reasons for suspecting Rove are 1) that it's very similar to things he's been known to do in the past (e.g. spreading negative information against his own candidate, such as he did for Harold See, forging documents as he did against Alan Dixon), and 2) it accomplished exactly what he would have wanted

• Could the same arguments be turned around?

  Not really. Nothing in the memos was contested, and all of it had been previously reported (e.g. by the BBC). Bush never even attempted to deny any of it. The people who would know even stated that the information in the memos was essentially correct. So it wouldn't have helped Kerry's team much at all to have the documents, even if they had been legitimate.

You can go on and on like this, but I don't see how you can make it a "tin foil hat" theory, even if it can't be proved. And bear in mind here that the burden of proof at this point is on you; the original poster asked a (possibly rhetorical) question and you attacked without (so far as I can see) much ground to stand on.

--MarkusQ

The ultimate answer is...

If it's posted on Slashdot, then it must be true. :P

20 Minutes Into The Future

In addition to blipverts, organ harvesting, and whacketts, chalk up another episode of Max Headroom coming to life.

Out in an abandoned heavy-industry area north of Sector 7, something strange is happening. Network 23 junior reporter Janie Crane is hiding out with a telephoto "gun camera" as two would-be terrorists blow up a huge empty building. Janie is left injured but alive by the blast.

[...]

But then, pipsqueak Breakthru-TV manages to get instant coverage of the explosion, and a huge ratings surge. When the network scrambles Edison Carter with Martinez at the stick of the helicopter, they get to the explosion only to have the police chief send them packing. The reporter from Breakthru is already on the scene, despite having lumbered in in a battered network bus. Worst of all, Ped Xing of the Zik-Zak Corporaton is threatening to move his advertising to the hotter Breakthru-TV.

[...]

Frank Braddock calls Cheviot back to gloat at the ratings bonanza they passed on, and is directed to a live interview with the White Brigades leader, Croyd Hauser, taking place on Breakthru. As they watch, an explosion levels another building. It's terrorism on demand, and Breakthru holds the rights.

From the synopsis to Max Headroom, Episode 15, "War" [maxheadroom.com], ca. 1987.

I for one...

... welcome our new al-Reuters image manipulating overlords!

When you have a hammer the world looks like a nail

You use reporters with a political agenda, shared by the editors, it should come as no surprise that this is what you get. The international press does not like Israel. They especially seem offended that the country hasn't just given up and died yet.

This is no way confined to Reuters. Here is an excerpt from yesterdays reliable sources between howard kurtz and Thomas ricks of the washington post.

Reliable sources [cnn.com]

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me. KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here. RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

This fellow Ricks is willing to spout crap like the above on national television. The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah. Israel a country that goes to the trouble of trying to get civilians away from targets before they are hit does not.

Re:When you have a hammer the world looks like a n

You use reporters with a political agenda, shared by the editors, it should come as no surprise that this is what you get. The international press does not like Israel. They especially seem offended that the country hasn't just given up and died yet.
Oh, re

Re:When you have a hammer the world looks like a n

Would you be happy if Cuba launches missiles at the USA because confirmed anti-communist elements in the USA kidnap three Cuban soldiers, kill 7 other Cuban soldiers and escape into the American borders not to even be glimpsed at by the American government?

Now imagine I tell you these anti-communist elements have attacked Cuba for a few decades now, and have kidnapped and killed other Cuban soldiers and civilians - all of this after Cuba retreated from the conquered American soil to prevent such attrocities. What do you think now?

more occurances

As peple have been pouring through recent Reuters photographs, a number of other discrepencies have arisen: Here's one http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extre me-makeover-beirut-edition.html [blogspot.com] from Drinking From Home. 2 separate photographers sent in captioned photographs of a woman who's house "had just been destroyed". The only problem is, it the same woman and same house but the claimed airstrikes were 2 weeks apart.

Define "exaggerated."

These days pros shoot digital. I am a pro, I shoot digital. Somehow people have this impression that only what comes "out of the camera" is "real," but a digital photo is just an A-D conversion with a given set of parameters. I can significantly change the look of a scene just by changing the settings of the camera.

More to the point, I often shoot RAW, which REQUIRES "development" in order to be shown online or printed, since as a file it's just an uncalibrated sensor dump, meaningless data, not an image at all. But the look of a RAW image can change DRASTICALLY when converted to JPG based on the choices I make when selecting things like white balance, exposure, sharpness, contrast, etc. (and these have to be manually selected--i.e. the choices must be made by me in order to get an image file out the other end, there is no "real" initial image).

The point is that the camera is only, and has always only been, a tool for realizing the vision of the photographer. It is not "objective" in any sense (and wasn't in the film days either, even film had to be "developed" and this process could vary an image quite a bit). Photoshop/GIMP/Silkypix/any other image processor is no different, and represents just an extension of the photography/development process.

If a JPEG image comes out of the camera with very low contrast, why is that the "real" scene and not an incorrect camera setting (contrast turned too low)? And if I then take a low contrast image in GIMP and adjust the contrast for better clarity, why is that a "fake" scene and not the "real" scene that I saw?

The logical extreme of such arguments is that the only "real" images in the digital age are taken with black-box cameras with all settings on "auto" and nothing adjusted afterward. Only people forget that digital cameras are just glorified A-D converters and that all of the "auto" settings are calibrated and coded by programmers who are also making decisions about how images will look (high contrast vs. low contrast, expose for shadows vs. expose for highlights, compensate for differences between human lens and camera lens or don't, etc.)

Every step of the photo process, from selecting the camera + lens in the first place all the way to selecting the compression level of the file after all else is said and done, is "editing." All photography is propaganda by the photographer and anyone that doesn't realize this is both naive and missing a great deal of the appreciable "art" involved in the process.

Re:Define "exaggerated."

If a JPEG image comes out of the camera with very low contrast, why is that the "real" scene and not an incorrect camera setting (contrast turned too low)? And if I then take a low contrast image in GIMP and adjust the contrast for better clarity, why is that a "fake" scene and not the "real" scene that I saw?

This is a bit ingenuous. Even before digital photo manipulation, a clear distinction was recognized between standard darkroom manipulations to adjust brightness, contrast, and color, and "trick photography" such as double exposures (which is analogous with what the photographer was doing with the Photoshop clone tool).

Re:Define "exaggerated."

Yes, but now things are very different. Sensor data is not subject to ANY limitations and is not by nature AT ALL a visual medium. Thus everything must be decided.

Most modern image processors include things like tone mapping and white balance. When developing from RAW, I can make the same image look like a boring stone bench on a sunny day or an ancient, craggy stone bench on a stormy night just by selecting different tone map and white balance settings. Modern digital sensors can often see the stars even in the daytime, even though most developments of the file would not show them. But if you map the blue tones at the top of the data curve across a much wider space, suddenly there they are -- in a deep blue, detailed sky -- even though you shot on a clear summer's day. The point is that those stars aren't fake, or exaggerated in any absolute sense. They're THERE and the sensor saw them. The only question is how that data is mapped to human visual space. I as the photographer have to choose.

Very often of course the intent is to get the photo as close to "my memory of the scene" as possible, which means trying to discard data beyond human perception without a camera. But is it really philosophically any "more real" to discard data than to map across to human visual characteristics in such a way as to be perceptible? But you'd be shocked in a group of photographers processing RAW images of the same scene just how much "memory" can vary.

Re:Define "exaggerated."

IMO, there's an exponential difference between adjusting brightness, contrast, or other filters that apply to the entire shot. Images themselves are just a lens's interpretation of a scene, just in that people's eyes are just their interpretation. Everyo

Re:Define "exaggerated."

Doing a little burn-and-dodge to fix the contrast in an image is one thing. Moving buildings around and doubling the thickness of smoke is another. Taking two photos in one session and claiming they were taken weeks apart is a third.

You are talking abo

Fake News Stories

In addition to the photos, there are many fake news stories out there. Like the one the photo was supposed to accompany said the photo was of a jet firing three missiles was actually the jet firing one flare. The report that a particular Israeli strike in Lebanon killed 40 civilians. There was only one casualty in that strike.

The fact that Reuters didn't even look at the photos before publishing is just laughable. Anyone with an ounce of experience in photography could tell they were fake. Either Reuters is so inept you can't trust them to know the truth from lies or they don't care to tell the difference. Heck, a death threat to "Zionist pigs" [speroforum.com] was traced to a Reuters IP. Sure, I'll believe anything they say.

Either way, as a previous poster said, read from a wide variety of news sources and figure it out for yourself.

Shockingly poor graphic skills

Are you telling me that a this Reuters professional photographer has "Photoshop" skills so poor as to try and pawn off this VERY poor photo edit as the real thing? My God, he took the same puff of smoke and simply stamped it an extra 25 times on the photo. Absolutely unbelievable that anyone is that stupid, much less a professional.
 

Another coup for LGF

LGF's extreme anti-Muslim stance is often disturbing, but this is the second time that they've made a major contribution by outing negligent reporting by the mainstream media--they were also the first to identify the fraudulent "Bush memos" as crude forgeries.

It's time to admit biases

These photos are the latest chapter in a long-running problem of the press... and I think it's time for the American press to finally come out and say what it is - biased. ALL press is biased, period. But only here in the U.S. do we all happily assume that, somehow, our press holds itself to its lofty goals.

Almost all of the European press is up front about its bias - left, right, or otherwise. It's liberating, it's informing, it's better for consumers. If I want to read the French press and see what's going on in the right, I read Liberation, the far-left (communist), L'Humanite, the right, Le Figaro, a center-left, Le Monde. By reading articles from each newspaper on a subject, you can hear what all sides are saying quickly and get much more information.

But here in the U.S., such a bias is reviled. Fox News, for example, is looked down on for its conservative bias. I look down on them as well - not because they have a bias, at least they're more open about it - but because they try to conform to the American press ideal of supposedly unbiased reporting by claiming they're "fair and balanced". Just come out and say it!

I don't care if the NY Times is left-leaning, either. That's fine. But they should at least ADMIT it.

Americans, journalists in particular, need to embrace their biases. Let us know where you're coming from so we CAN get the message from both sides, not some filtered down, biased report passing itself off as "both" sides of the story.

Re:It's time to admit biases

Its not bias in this case. its deception.

Theres a huge difference.

Tip of Iceberg

After browsing through a number of blogs, the two photos mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg. Reuters has distributed many other photographs from Adnan Hajj that are fake or questionable. With his talents, maybe Hajj can get a job with the Weekly World News.

Playboy!

Whether you're a CNN fan, or a FoxNEWS fan, you have to wonder how much of what we see is fake, or exaggerated.

I'm a Playboy fan, because nothing in that magazine is fake or exaggerated.

Hezbollah photographer

The bad photoshop work isn't really the story here. It's just what got him fired from Reuters. In one example [blogspot.com] and yet another [powerlineblog.com], this photographer is acting more as a Hezbollah propaganda operative than a news photographer. He was responsible for one of the most used photos from Qana with the dead child being held up, and as recently as yesterday had a picture on Page 1 of the NYT of an injured Lebonese civilian. He's basically the Peter Parker of Lebanon. It's wouldn't be hard to get the best photos if you were working with the terrorists who control the region!

they are all somewhat guilty

The general public in Lebanon is to blame.

Lots of them actually support taking shots at Israel. The people who don't support that have still allowed it to occur.

I know, it's easy for me to say that the people in Lebanon should have put Hezbolla in jail or executed the whole lot of them. There isn't a one politician over there who dares to take a strong stand against the bastards.

But yet... a nation is responsible for keeping such things in check. Each and every person has a duty to keep the gangs under control. When this is not done, somebody else will come in and do the job.

If you let the criminals operate out of your house, don't complain when you get raided.

And so badly done...

Those are REALLY badly doctored photos - easy to spot. I think quite a few amateur GIMP/Photoshop users could have done a much better job (I know I can).

If such obviously doctored photos are making it past the editors - who knows what more subtly done stuff has escaped detection.

Fake Sound

I have a friend who's a sound engineer and he says he always hears library sounds on news reports. e.g. A report from Iraq may have some standard AK47 shots dubbed on to make it sound more interesting.