Altered War- The Fall-out From The "Doctered" Photos Begins

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Reproduced under the fair dealings act.
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/2006/08/08/1724171-sun.html

Tue, August 8, 2006
   Altered war
Manipulated photos highlight untruths in Mideast conflict

By LICIA CORBELLA, EDITOR
 
They say the first casualty of war is Truth. Yesterday, the respected news agency Reuters issued an unprecedented announcement. Essentially, it admitted it unwittingly published propaganda as straight news.
In a released statement, the wire agency announced the withdrawal of all 920 photographs by freelance Lebanese photographer, Adnan Hajj from its database "after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah," said the statement.

Wishful thinking on Reuters' part.
The breaches go far deeper than just two photos.

The "urgent review" was initiated after numerous examples of staged "rescue" photos were shown on numerous blogs on the Internet including: http://powerlinblog.com/archives/014919.php and http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html and http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php

Global picture editor Tom Szlukovenyi said: "There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image."
Hajj has worked for Reuters from 1993 to 2003 and then again since April 2005.

One has to wonder what other propaganda has been disseminated as straight news by Hajj.
The statement continues: "Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after it found that a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings.
"An immediate enquiry began into Hajj's other work," continued the Reuters statement.

It established yesterday that a photograph of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug. 2, had also been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three.
"Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout its long and distinguished history. It undermines not only our reputation but also the good name of all our photographers," Szlukovenyi said.
But altering photos wasn't Hajj's only specialty. As http://powerlinblog.com/archives/014919.php shows.

On July 24 at 2:37 PM ET a Hajj photo shows a destroyed southern Beirut neighbourhood with a very distinctive building with a geometric design on the building.
On August 5 -- 12 days following that photo, Hajj sent out a photo of the exact same neighbourhood and the following cutline accompanied the photo: "A Lebanese woman looks at the sky as she walks past a building flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)".

So, the world believes Israel is flattening entire neighbourhoods constantly when in fact the same neighbourhood is repeatedly shown. Thank heavens for bloggers.
More interestingly, however, http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html exposes that these war photographers from various agencies are having the same "news" photo staged for them.
In this blog, the same child is seen being carried by three different men in their rush to get the obviously dead child to an ambulance. The photos were clearly staged for each different photographer over several hours.

Did the photographers know this? It's hard to know.
Yesterday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora initially said 40 people were killed in an Israeli air strike in Marjayoun. Oops. Slight exaggeration. Actually five people were killed.

And remember the news from Qana, where apparently 54 members of two families were killed July 30 by Israeli bombs according to Lebanese officials? Remember how they said mostly children died?
Human Rights Watch put the toll at 28 killed and 13 missing. Wanna bet the missing 13 were evacuated to Canada? From 40 to five, 54 to 28. The Lebanese government claims more than 500 Lebanese have died since this war began -- a war the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah started.

So, what's the Truth? It's definitely less and likely a lot less.

Needless to say, it's sad that any innocent people had to die thanks to the lunacy of Hezbollah. It's particularly sad that Truth is killed again and again and Canadians embrace the lies of terrorist groups rather than the Truth of our ally.

 

[Sig_Des]

Utterly disgusting...

But you know that articles denouncing manipulated photos or propoganda, will just be called counter-propaganda by some

 

[GO!!!]

Now that's fanatical devotion to a cause - carrying around a dead child for hours in the ME in July-just so the reporters all get a shot.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

It would be nice if they could task a remote sentry device (JSTAR?) to monitor sites after they have been hit.  Then you would see how these clowns conduct the circus afterwards.  Reminds me of footage from a few years ago where Palestine was trooping around a boy who had been "murdered" by the IDF for throwing stones or some such crap.  There was a massive crowd all worked into a lather, and they had this guy wrapped in a shroud and were carrying him over their heads on a stretcher.  Well, seems everyone didn't know the steps to the "Jihad Jitter" (much the same as the obligatory drunk fat chick who tries to keep up with the Hustle when they play "My Eyes Don't Cry" at the local watering hole, but I digress) and they go into a speed wobble.  The stretcher gets dropped, and you can clearly see the clown get up and run into the crowd. 
And you know bloody well that someone in the crowd said "Allah has delivered us a miracle!!" 

 

[2 Cdo]

It would be nice if they could task a remote sentry device (JSTAR?) to monitor sites after they have been hit.  Then you would see how these clowns conduct the circus afterwards.  Reminds me of footage from a few years ago where Palestine was trooping around a boy who had been "murdered" by the IDF for throwing stones or some such crap.  There was a massive crowd all worked into a lather, and they had this guy wrapped in a shroud and were carrying him over their heads on a stretcher.  Well, seems everyone didn't know the steps to the "Jihad Jitter" (much the same as the obligatory drunk fat chick who tries to keep up with the Hustle when they play "My Eyes Don't Cry" at the local watering hole, but I digress) and they go into a speed wobble.  The stretcher gets dropped, and you can clearly see the clown get up and run into the crowd. 
And you know bloody well that someone in the crowd said "Allah has delivered us a miracle!!" 

Now that's funny! ;D

 

[rmacqueen]

I remember reading a story where Hezbollah would line up ambulances well away from foreign journalists and then send them screaming by with lights flashing and siren wailing even just for effect.  They were actually going nowhere.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Anderson Cooper reported just that weeks ago.

 

[Blakey]

http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=2854

 

[Bo]

An interesting perspective on the matter, and it puts such fabrications in a different light :

Exploiting the Reuters incident

It is indisputably wrong for a media outlet to alter photographs or other information so as to falsely represent what is being reported. That is beyond dispute. Yet for three straight days now (and still going strong), the right-wing blogosphere has been wallowing in a self-celebratory swarm because two photographs taken in Lebanon and published by Reuters were found to have been altered using Photoshop by the freelance photographer who submitted them. Rush Limbaugh has now joined the party, decreeing that "Reuters ought to be investigated." (The frequency with which Bush supporters call for media organizations to be investigated because of what they report is itself notable.)

Given the intensity and duration of the blogospheric mob scene fueled by the Reuters discovery, one would think that this event demonstrates some sort of important point beyond the particular photographer's poor judgment or deliberate deceit. But it is difficult to see what the point might be, to put it mildly.

The alterations made to the original Beirut photograph appear to have increased the amount of smoke one sees in the photo, taken after a Beirut bombing raid, but the amount of smoke in the original unaltered photograph is itself quite substantial. Israel really is bombing Lebanon; buildings really are being destroyed; many Lebanese civilians really are dying; and nobody who is serious disputes any of that.

These excited bloggers seem to be using the Reuters incident to try to "prove" that the dreaded "mainstream media" -- and Reuters has long been a special target for many extremists on the right (who sometimes refer to it as "al-Reuters") -- is hopelessly biased against Israel and in favor of Islamic terrorists, including Hezbollah, and that nothing the MSM reports about this war, or anything else for that matter, can be trusted. Many of these bloggers appear to hope that this incident will call into question the reliability of all reporting on the war outside of YTNews and Fox, including what happened in Qana, Lebanon, and any reports that reflect negatively on the Israeli war effort.

But Reuters hardly has a monopoly on scandals of this sort. Quite the contrary, examples of photographic alterations and political distortions of evidence are abundant. The blogger TBogg today documents two instances of photographic manipulation -- one from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, which cloned members of the military in the audience while the president was speaking, and another that used Photoshop to falsely depict John Kerry at an antiwar rally next to Jane Fonda.

And then there was the complete misquoting by Fox News' Carl Cameron of John Kerry at the height of the 2004 campaign:

"Move over Dan Rather, Fox News' Carl Cameron is joining you in the hoaxer hall of shame. Fox News' Web site posted a story written by its top political reporter yesterday with made-up quotes that painted Democratic presidential contender John Kerry as a spa-going girly-man."

Ironically, one of the anti-Reuters lynch mob leaders, Little Green Footballs, defended Fox's publication of false Kerry quotes by arguing that Fox "pulled the article down and apologized for it the same day. That is, of course, how a responsible news organization handles a situation like this" (emphasis added). That, of course, is precisely what Reuters did with the altered photographs. In fact, the agency went much further by removing all of the photographs and announcing it will never use that photographer again. Fox, by contrast, refused to remove Cameron from covering the Kerry campaign and continues to employ him. Worse, Fox excused itself by claiming that publication of the fake quotes "occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice."

And then there is the still-unsolved mystery of the identity of the pro-Iraq war advocates who created forged documents purporting to prove that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium oxide ("yellow cake") from Niger -- complete fiction that made its way into Senate and presidential briefings, and then into the president's State of the Union address, helping to sell the invasion of Iraq.

By all means, misleading photographs and other fabrications should be documented and exposed. But such scandals typically reflect little about anything beyond the culpable individuals involved.

-- Glenn Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/08/07/bloggers/index.html

I agree with what Glenn noted in his opening remarks about these photos - there is no excuse for them. But the supposed "hysteria" by the Wingers about this incident really isn't anything new, and it fits their larger war on the mainstream media in of itself. Of course when you shine the same light on them for similar deceits like those mentioned above, they run for cover.

Just a little something to munch on.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Taking into account of Hezbollah's media manipulation is it any wonder some may question the rest of what's being reported.  It doesn't help when some in the media (which is suppossed to be unbiased) knowingly and purposfully change the flavour of the story.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

The weakest defense in history.......what news agency used those photos as real?

...and lets be truthful.....of course the news agency's support any kind of war or terrorism, there is big bucks to be made in bringing us even more human suffering than the other guys.
Kinda like the munition makers who are probably making slurping noises like the weasel on Bugs Bunny with the news that somewhere another flare-up is happening.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Many photos taken in or near combat situations are posed.  Some of the best-known photos from various theatres of war were posed.  It's less clear whether alteration was a customary practice before the age of digitization.

The interesting perspective is that this is just one more incident to add to a long list.  I stopped believing anything shown in pictures from the region long ago.  Too much bullshit, too little fact and context.

 

[paracowboy]

An interesting perspective on the matter, and it puts such fabrications in a different light

no, it does not. You should move a little closer. Reaching that far, you'll pull something.

 

[GO!!!]

So the "perspective" is that all media and their supporters are wrong, biased and use false information and images, so they should all be excused?

No one is wrong because we all are?

That's pretty weak. Reuters screwed up, probably have been for a long time, and are paying the price of crappy fact and image checking.

 

[Klc]

The part that gets me... Reuters hasn't apologised. They have not even admitted they made a mistake, stating that the photographer had broken their policies...
Shouldn't there be some sort of editor looking for this kind of thing? Blatantly photoshopped photos, especially from a local.

And his convenient picture of the missile strike on the Israeli ship. Either he is the luckiest photographer in the world, or knew where to be and when. Somehow he doesn't seem like an impartial journalist...

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Impartial journalists are as rare as an albino rhino.

 

[squealiox]

Yup, reuters sure dropped the ball on this one (and yes, they HAVE apologised). but as probably the only person here who actually worked at reuters once upon a time, i gotta laugh at this whole idea that the company has some sort of ideological bias. their editors have a wide variety of opinions and backgrounds, and their only "hidden agenda" seems to be staying ahead of AP (in general news) and bloomberg (in finance). as we have just seen, they're also pretty transparent -- and fast -- when it comes to acknowledging and correcting errors.

it's obvious that the photographer in this case was trying to add visual impact to the shot. but if you compare the original with the tampered photo, they both seem to depict the same amount of damage (http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/47186/post-423567.html#msg423567). this is most likely a case of professional fraud, for which he has been rightfully shown the door, rather than propaganda. like i said before, it's a cutthroat industry, and reuters has never been shy about trimming its payroll.

when all is said and done, reuters still has a far better track record than, say, the national post, the new york times or the daily telegraph, for example.

 

[Klc]

Reproduced under the fair dealings act.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-08-07T143833Z_01_N07348592_RTRIDST_0_MIDEAST-REUTERS.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

Reuters withdraws all photos by Lebanese freelance
Mon Aug 7, 2006 10:38am ET145
LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.

Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work.

"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Szlukovenyi said in a statement.

"Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy."

The news and information agency announced the decision in an advisory note to its photo service subscribers. The note also said Reuters had tightened editing procedures for photographs from the conflict and apologised for the case.

Removing the images from the Reuters database excludes them from future sale.

Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after it found that a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings.

An immediate enquiry began into Hajj's other work.

It established on Monday that a photograph of an Isaeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had also been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three.  (Contunued on URL)

More retraction than apoligy, IMHO.

 

[m410]

it's obvious that the photographer in this case was trying to add visual impact to the shot. but if you compare the original with the tampered photo, they both seem to depict the same amount of damage

I disagree.  The original photo looks to me like there is only one damaged building, billowing a lot of smoke.  Anyway, there is a host of recent questionable and outright deceiptful photojournalism uncovered here.

 

[Blakey]

:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-york-times-busted-in-hezbollah.html
...and the NY Times eventual correction... :
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html