Reuters did the right thing - but why did they let this go on for 920 pics? The blogosphere is having a field day with the FAKE war pics coming from one "journalist" out of Lebanon. This simply fuels the mistrust of MSM even more.
Good for the blogosphere for catching it and bearing the truth. We'd just say, however, that was is bad no matter how you look at it.
Making war look worse
Bloggers bust a Reuters photographer for making the smoke in Lebanon look bigger and blacker. What would make him do that?
August 7, 2006 04:12 PM Printable version
Those bloggers have done it again: They've caught a fake used in a major media story.
After Reuters ran a photo last week of black smoke over Beirut, suspicious bloggers noted that smoke isn't known to rise in incredibly symmetrical bulbous billows. That was clear evidence of Photoshopping, using a tool to "clone" one part of a picture so you can cut-and-paste it over other parts. Someone took this photo, added smoke and made it darker. You can see the before-and-after most clearly here.
The sleuth who proved the hoax was Charles Johnson, the man behind the controversial Little Green Footballs blog and the same man who uncovered the faking of the memos used in Dan Rather's fateful - for Rather, that is - story about George Bush's military service. In that case, too, Johnson took the original and the fake the showed how the deception was done by dissecting and overlaying the efforts at technical trickery.
Reuters, however, did not wait 11 days, as CBS did, to respond to the outing. Yesterday, it pulled the photo, apologised, and suspended the photographer, Adnan Hajj. The photographer was already controversial in certain blog circles for taking part in what some contended was a stage-managed presentation of the deaths at Qana.
One wonders why anyone, especially a photographer and journalist, would feel compelled to amplify war. No matter what side you are on, does anyone really need to make war worse?
