Free Republic

Jayson Blair knows his new profession — life coach — smacks some people in the face like a bad punchline. "People say, 'Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense,'" says Blair, the ex-journalist best known for foisting plagiarism and fabrications into the pages of The New York Times. "Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say 'Wait a minute. It does make sense.'" Blair, 33, resigned from the Times in 2003, leaving a journalistic scandal in his wake. The resulting furor led the paper's top two newsroom executives to...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Two white supremacists accused of plotting to assassinate Barack Obama are on lockdown in their Tennessee jail cell. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sunday that 20-year-old Daniel Cowart of Tennessee and 18-year-old Paul Schlesselman of Arkansas are under the lockdown for their protection. Obion County Sheriff Jerry Vastbinder says they were separated from other inmates at the request of federal authorities.

A source close to the Obama campaign tells The Brody File that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama approached Trinity United Church Pastor Otis Moss III a couple months ago to discuss whether Obama should remain with the church. This person tells me that Senator Obama asked pastor Moss how the controversy was affecting the church and the discussion focused in on what would be best for the church and best for Obama. The initial conversation took place after the Jeremiah Wright sermons became widespread public knowledge but before Jeremiah Wright's speech to the National Press Club. Reverend Moss knew about...

Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabricationA book by the late Hugh Trevor-Roperand due to be published five years after his death argues that Scottish history is based on myths and falsehoods Stuart MacDonald SCOTLAND’S history is weaved from a “fraudulent” fabric of “myths and falsehoods”, according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians. The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the...

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was fired by the Board of Regents in July. But that didn't stop Churchill from still teaching at CU this week. According to the Boulder Daily Camera, a group of student supporters rented out a classroom at CU's Eaton Humanities Building and invited Churchill to teach. The topic? "ReVisioning American History: Colonization, Genocide and Formation of the U.S. Settler State." And it appears this isn't a one-time-only event.

Fired University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill will return to the Boulder campus next week to begin teaching an unsanctioned course that's being organized by his student supporters. University officials have distanced themselves from the planned lecture series — slated to begin Tuesday night — and say that Churchill remains terminated. The students organizing Churchill's teachings say the series is intended for those who "missed out" on his years as an American Indian studies professor and as head of the ethnic studies department at CU. Churchill's supporters can hold the classes on campus because the university allows student groups to...

[from "Weathermen" terrorist Bill Ayers]: Ward Churchill is under a sustained, orchestrated, and determined attack because of his political beliefs and statements and activities, and nothing more. No one doubts his productivity or his accomplishments. But the attack on Churchill is neither isolated nor innocent— the high school history teacher on the west side of Chicago gets the message, and so does the English literature teacher in Detroit and the math teacher in an Oakland middle school: be careful what you say; stay close to the official story; stick to the authorized text. If someone of Ward Churchill’s stature and...

University of Colorado-Boulder Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson ... the university is also in the process of overhauling its faculty termination procedures following the controversial firing of CU ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill. Churchill was fired for scholarly misconduct, but is still being paid pending a full review of his actions. A faculty committee reviewing Churchill’s conduct is expected to make a recommendation to Brown in about two weeks, Peterson said. Then, Brown will make a recommendation to the school’s Board of Regents. “I don’t think he’ll have to deliberate a terribly long time” over what he’ll recommend to the board,...

A journalist working for Arabic TV news channel al-Jazeera has been arrested in Egypt for allegedly fabricating videos of police torturing suspects. Huweida Taha Metwalli was stopped on her way to Qatar and 50 video tapes were found in her luggage, the Egyptian interior ministry said. She is reportedly charged with "tarnishing Egypt's reputation and harming Egyptian national interests". Al-Jazeera said the tapes showed a "documentary reconstruction" by actors.

A longtime aide to Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors. Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter that bluntly criticized the book to Carter and others. Stein wrote that the book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," was replete with factual errors, material copied from other sources and "simply invented segments," according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman, said the former president...

U.S. citizens went to the polls on Tuesday to elect 435 representatives, 33 senators, and 36 governors, and the votes are nearly all counted now. Democrats took control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994. The results from California and Washington indicate that the Democrats have actually polled more votes, despite the fact that the Republicans had done well in those states in recent years. In fact, the Iraq war was the decisive factor in the United States’ midterm congressional elections, which some Arab political analysts have called the “Iraqi congressional elections”. During the electoral campaigns,...

Professor's fate may not be decided until well into next year. The University of Colorado's efforts to fire Ward Churchill are on hold because of a dispute over whether the university has to come up with $20,000 in state funds for the professor's defense. Churchill's attorney, David Lane, said a lawsuit to get the money could be filed by next week. Meantime, there's been no progress on Churchill's appeal since August, and it could be well into 2007 before a final decision on his fate is made. CU spokeswoman Michele McKinney said the delay is outside of the administration's control....

An expert on academic freedom said Tuesday the University of Colorado should be held to a high standard of proof if it tries to punish an embattled professor on allegations of plagiarism. A faculty committee is investigating research misconduct charges against Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies who first came under fire for likening Sept. 11 victims to an infamous Nazi. "The burden of proof should be a very high standard," said Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure programs for the American Association of University Professors. Churchill has confirmed that a subcommittee of the university's Standing...

Yesterday evening, I received a call from my column syndicate, Creators Syndicate. The Associated Press had phoned my editor to inform her that it would be sending a response to my column yesterday about detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. (Funny how quickly they respond now. Where have they been the past five months? Oh, right: Busy covering up the news about Hussein's April 12 capture by the military at a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache.) The AP last night asked my editor to supply its corporate communications office with my newspaper client list...

IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance. Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark. But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists. It is this...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths' A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war. The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club. "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF," said Simon McGregor-Wood, Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC...

The University of Colorado student union voted Thursday in support of firing tenured ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill. The union's legislative council voted 9-6 in favor of a resolution supporting former Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano's recommendation to fire Churchill for plagiarism and research misconduct. The resolution will be sent to the student government's tri-executives and will go into effect if two of the three student leaders sign it. "This is not a problem that is attached to the entire ethnic studies department — just a not-so-good professor and he doesn't deserve to be employed here," ... "He takes away from...

Fauxtography Defender's Faux News Turns out that Greg Mitchell, the Editor & Publisher editor who has been attacking the blogosphere like a rabid ferret for pointing out the bogus news from the Middle East, has first-hand experience with staging news. (Hat tip: Confederate Yankee.) Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts,...

***updated with MSM contact info below...Dan Riehl follows up with observations about the ambulance license plates...Related: Daniel Freedman on Hezbollah's helpers at the Red Cross*** Take a good look at these three images of Red Cross ambulances in Lebanon, supposedly deliberately targeted by Israel, and broadcast worldwide by the MSM last month: On August 6, I linked to Dan Riehl's excellent post raising questions and doubts (his initial post here) about the alleged missile targeting by Israel of the Red Cross ambulances. Infinitives Unsplit first called attention to the dubious ambulance claims on July 27. Now, Internet documentarian and photojournalist...

All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us A jawa video spoof on Beirut Fauxtography.

+ Introduction On the night of July 23, 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at and struck two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, causing huge explosions that injured everyone inside the vehicles. Or so says the global media, including Time magazine, the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and thousands of other outlets around the world. If true, the incident would have been an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by the state of Israel. But there's one problem: It never happened. * * *...

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." Reuters on Sunday withdrew an image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli air strike on the suburbs of Beirut on...

The first Photoshop war Lebanon war's doctored photos could be harbinger of photojournalism crisis Gal Mor The photo of an apparently new Mickey Mouse doll, resting on a ruined street in the Lebanese town of Tyre following an Israeli Air Force attack, took me back to a British TV show called "Drop the Dead Monkey," which aired in Israel about 15 years ago. One of the journalists in Channel 4's satirical show used to hang around battle zones with a teddy bear in his trunk and place it at disaster zones a short time before cameras began shooting, in order...

Many of the mainstream media apologists have conceded – and they had little choice but to do so – that many of the photographs of the Israelis’ response to Hez b’Allah’s act of war, were staged. The evidence of staging and Photoshopping is too public. The media allowed itself to be used to defame Israel, stir up sympathy for Lebanon and halt the advance into Lebanon. But the concessions of wrongdoing stop short with digital alterations. Media spokesmen are still in denial about the biggest media fraud of all: the dramatic dead baby display at Qana. EUreferendum has not given...

When Reuters was forced to sever ties with free-lance photographer Adnan Hajj and remove more than 900 of his photos from its database earlier this month, long-whispered questions about the reliability of Arab stringers and freelancers came to the forefront. But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month. In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically...

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims. Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the...

FCC Questions TV Stations on 'Fake News' By Associated Press August 15, 2006, 4:54 PM CDT WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission has mailed letters to the owners of 77 television stations inquiring about their use of video news releases, a type of programming critics refer to as "fake news." Video news releases are packaged news stories that usually employ actors to portray reporters who are paid by commercial or government groups. The letters were sparked by allegations that television stations have been airing the videos as part of their news programs without telling viewers who paid for them. FCC...

Lebanese rescuer 'Green Helmet' injured A civil defense worker who has drawn controversy for holding up the bodies of children killed in Lebanon said Tuesday he was lightly injured fighting a weekend fire sparked by an Israeli bomb. Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre. "I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris...

Ray Robison has yet another example of staged photojournalism from Lebanon, a car with verses from the Koran strategically placed for propaganda effect: Al-AP at it again with staged photos. Ray comments: Notice this car has a wall-hanging positioned on the door. An Arabic reader tells me this board has verses from the Koran on it. Because Islam does not allow for images of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims use verses to adorn their homes the same way some Christians use paintings of Jesus. If you want to make the argument that this wall-hanging got where it is by chance, then...

Fox is now showing the German TV video of Qana showing Green Helmet Guy posing a dead child Click here to watch the Fox News video Here is the original FR post Here is the original video on YouTube: Green Helmet the movie director [Germany's NDR busts him in the act]

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography. The case also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline pressure each day, to detect digital alterations. "The Soviets had to have a whole department to doctor pictures," said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair and a former director of photography for Life magazine. "Now all it takes is a swipe of a mouse, and the kid down the...

AP Circles the Wagons Around Green Helmet Guy It’s utterly surreal. The Associated Press does a full court press, supporting the man they now call Salam Daher with a multimedia presentation packed full of distortions and outright lies: A Grueling Task in Lebanon. Watch the AP presentation here: A Grueling Task in Lebanon

http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

Kopel: Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. If you see a news photograph of the war in Lebanon, shot from within Hezbollah territory, can you be confident the picture and caption are accurate? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Earlier this week, Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his portfolio of 920 pictures after Little Green Footballs, The Jawa Report, and many other weblogs provided evidence that Hajj had used digital editing and other techniques to fake numerous photos of the Lebanon war. On July 31, the News and Post ran the...

1) Man arrives with suitcase full of American toys and dismantles doll in pink dress. (AP) 2) Man carries dismantled doll, minnie mouse and teletubbie for placing in dramatic poses. (Reuters) 3) Fauxtographer takes pictures when props are in position.(Reuters)

How Much Does It Cost to Buy Global TV News? The vast majority of the TV news pictures you see are produced by two TV news companies. Presented here is a case for how a large amount of money has been used to inject a clear bias into the heart of the global TV news gathering system. That this happens is not at question, whether it is by accident or design is harder to tell. You may not realize it, but if you watch any TV news broadcast on any station anywhere in the world, there is a better than...

DAY 2 - THIS IS OUR 'TOP' POST UNTIL WE GET A RESPONSE FROM AP Page views since posting: 10,411 - First posted: 7.25 PM 10 August 2006. New post underneath this one. They hunt in packs, they film in packs and they lie in packs. And their bosses, sitting in their air-conditioned offices, thousands of miles from the action, back up their lies. And the liar-in-chief is Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor for Associated Press. Unlike Reuters' who have at least admitted their photo-fraud and started their own internal investigation, Carroll's hastily-produced "rebuttal" of the staged...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of...

ATTENTION EDITORS - CAPTION CORRECTION FOR SJS01 - 05 WHICH WERE TRANSMITTED AT APPROXIMATELY 1725 GMT ON AUGUST 9, 2006. THE CAPTION INCORRECTLY STATES THE CAUSE OF DEATH. CORRECTED VERSIONS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW THIS ADVISORY. WE ARE SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED. REUTERS. A Palestinian man carries the body of three year-old Raja Abu Shaban, in Gaza August 9, 2006. The three-year-old girl who had been reported killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Wednesday actually died of an accident, Palestinian medical workers said on Thursday. Workers at Gaza's Shifa hospital said on August 10, 2006 that the...

-Snip- As we said about the Reuters incident, media bias is a consensus, not a conspiracy. Consensus is what this apparent rash of unprofessional photography appears to be, which should remind U.S. policy-makers that active public diplomacy is indispensable as long as there are journalists who find war stories too good to check. -Snip-These new instances appear to be shoddy journalism, not propagandizing, and so their bias is inadvertent but nevertheless revealing. -Snip- Once the facts emerge in such cases, the full weight of the government's communications efforts should be made to ensure that the correct information is distributed broadly...

Warning Graphic Content Germany`s NDR presents unpublished video footage from the qana events, demasking "Green Helmet" as a cynical movie director, staging photographs with a liitle boys body. ... (more) Watch the video here Warning: It's graphic.

LGF: “Fauxtography” is born Slublog: Toys in all the right places Extreme Makeover Beirut Edition Allah Pundit * Lebanese pieta * Gway Pundit Ynetnews on AP photos Watch the Video

Media Bias: Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige. Over the weekend, a Reuters photographer was caught trying to make one of Israel's defensive attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon look much more devastating than it was. The photo was eventually withdrawn and the photographer ostensibly fired. The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj,...

UNDATED -- Hajj also worked as a freelancer for The Associated Press from 2003-2005. the AP was reviewing all 193 of his images in its photo archives to verify their authenticity. On Monday, the AP recalled a photo that it had transmitted Sunday night of a worker in Alaska examining an oil pipeline. In that photo, the worker appeared to have four hands, and there were other elements such as a section of pipe that appeared to have a double image. Lyon said the distortions were unintentional and resulted from careless use by the photographer of a software feature in...

The Passion of the Toys In Platoon, Oliver Stone said the first casualty of war is innocence. He was wrong. As the photos here show, the first casualties of war are...the symbols of innocence. And photographers from Reuters and the AP just happened upon many of these perfectly placed symbols of war's horrors. Ben Curtis, AP Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Issam Kobeisi, Reuters Mohamed Azakir, Reuters This last one is the only one that seems...untouched. Feel the pathos. Mourn for these oh-so-photogenic and suspiciously dust-free trinkets of childhood. Just don't ask any questions about their...

USA Today gives Condi 'demon eyes,' pulls photo Paper admits it gave secretary of state'unnatural appearance' in Web edition Posted: October 26, 20055:10 p.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Manipulated Associated Press photo of Condoleezza Rice published online by USA Today USA Today pulled a photograph of Condoleezza Rice from its website after a weblog revealed it was manipulated, giving the secretary of state a menacing, demon-eyesing stare. Original AP photo The remarkable changes were first noted by a weblog called The Pen, which cited an original version of the Associated Press photograph. After a host of weblogs highlighted the photo, the nationwide...

Reuters reported that 40 people were killed in a Lebanese village by Israeli air strikes. Less than three hours later, the Associated Press reported that the number of casualties had been dropped to one.

Michelle recaps the Hajj/Reuters affair along with great examples of the doctored and staged photos. A must see. Click here to watch the videoA must watch