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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]

Once again, fake news is in the news, as it turns out that many moving stories of carnage in Lebanon were not only moving, but, well, fake. This raises major questions about the future of the news business, and offers a significant threat to free expression.

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

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...

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...

The new UN Human Rights Council on Friday will hold its second emergency session this summer on Israel, urged by Islamic countries to condemn the Jewish state for "massive bombardment of Lebanese civilian populations" and other "gross and systematic human rights violations." The 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference, which gathered enough signatures to require the meeting, have put together a harshly worded draft resolution that blames Israel without any mention of Hizbullah, whose capture of two Israeli soldiers a month ago triggered the attack on Lebanon. The council, which in a similar session July 6 voted 29-11 to deplore...

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...

This is a must see for everyone, exposing some of the greatest fraud in the main stream media regarding the Israeli conflict http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

-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

Thought some fun on Monday night would be ok..(grabbin the popcorn)..

Reuters, you are not alone. The news agency fired a photographer this weekend after it became clear that he had doctored war photos from Lebanon, but it would seem that Reuters isn't the only respectable news organization with this problem. While not quite so stupid as to get sloppy with Photoshop, Tyler Hicks of the venerable New York Times has some questionable work of his own. In this photo, a man appears to be pulling a remarkably un-dusty, possibly dead man from wreckage in Tyre -- note the victim's shorts and his hat, which is conveniently tucked to his side....

The recent discovery that the Reuters news agency released a digitally manipulated photograph as an authentic image of the bombing in Beirut has drawn attention to the important topic of bias in the media. But lost in the frenzy over one particular image is an even more devastating fact: that over the last week Reuters has been caught red-handed in an astonishing variety of journalistic frauds in the photo coverage of the war in Lebanon. This page serves as an overview of the various types of hoaxes, lies and other deceptions perpetrated by Reuters in recent days, since the details...

Charles Johnson could tell there was something wrong with the news photo the minute he saw it. Something about the three plumes of black smoke rising over the buildings -- smoke just doesn't curl that way, pirouetting in unison. It was, he wrote Saturday, "blatant evidence of manipulation." He was right on target. The Reuters photo showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut was doctored. The British-based news service acknowledged as much Sunday, withdrawing that picture and another doctored image, of an Israeli jet, that were taken by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj. The agency subsequently severed its ties...

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,...

Page 1 above the fold in yesterday's New York Times featured a photo (below) by our new acquaintance Adnan Hajj. I suspect that not all is as it appears to be in the photo, and somehow doubt that Times readers will ever learn why that might be the case.The Reuters caption reads: "A severely wounded Lebanese civilian is carried away on a stretcher at Maameltain bridge, after it was targeted by Israeli air strikes, in the north of Beirut August 4, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)" (Thanks to reader David Butz.)

Take a close look at the above photo. (Pay close attention to his shorts, his dustless chest, muscular torso, the dust on his hands, and the hat tucked in the crook of his arm.) You've probably seen the image before. It was part of a NYTimes photo essay series published online here. It's an iconic image of Lebanese death at the hands of Israel--even described as the Lebanese pieta. Snip Only guess what? The body depicted "buried under the rubble" appears to have been up and walking in the photographer's photo series of the scene throughout the day as a...

Another bogus photo? (Update: “The Passion of the Toys�) posted at 2:36 pm on August 8, 2006 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly Just got an e-mail about the following photo from someone who claims to work at Boeing.Caption: Two Lebanese army soldiers inspect a damaged vehicle that was struck by Israeli ware [sic] plane missiles at the village of Kfar Zabad in the eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanon Sunday, Aug. 6, 2006. Israel and Hezbollah sharply intensified fighting Saturday with airstrikes, rocket attacks and brutal ground fighting, an apparent bid to inflict maximum mutual damage even as...

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...

(Scroll down or click here to see Part 1.) To describe the MSM as a bunch of intellectually incurious, useless, effete hacks would only be partially accurate. They are actually quite useful---to our enemies. There are some who consider them to be accidentally useful, like Lenin's "useful idiots." They say that it is the de facto result of the aggregate biases held by the majority of journalists, but that it is not intentional. I wonder. Misreporting, faked photos, staged incidents. Refusal to correct stories that have been utterly discredited. The withholding of footage that proves an earlier report incorrect.* Rathergate....

Altered war Manipulated photos highlight untruths in Mideast conflict By LICIA CORBELLA 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...

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

The War’s Media Fall-Out From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Mon, 2006-08-07 19:16 A quote from Helen Szamuely on EuReferendum, 7 August 2006 (http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/what-we-are-up-against.html) What we are dealing with is not one news agency having a rogue photographer and incompetent editors who then try to cover their backs but a canker that has eaten into almost the entire MSM or, at least, its English language parts. There are various reasons here, I think. One is the bias that is no longer seen as bias. The MSM tends to lean to the left and takes up all left-wing causes...

L.A. Times Photographer Fired Over Altered Image Poynteronline Posted, Apr. 2, 2003 Updated, Apr. 3, 2003 L.A. Times Photographer Fired Over Altered Image By Kenny F. Irby Contributors:Larry Larsen More in this series April 1 may forever haunt Colin Crawford, Los Angeles Times Director of Photography, and Brian Walski, a staff photographer covering the war in Iraq for the paper. That was the day Walski was fired, after it was revealed that a photo he submitted on Sunday was actually a composite of two images he had captured.The photo was shared primarily with other Tribune properties via Newscom, the company's internal picture...

I don't know if this has been brought to anyone's attention yet, but in a quick search of the authenticated Reuters photographs attributed to Adnan Hajj, I found the following two. One is from July 24 of a bombed out area in Beirut, with a clearly identifiable building in a prominent part of the shot. The second is of the exact same area, same buildings, same condition, with a woman walking past "a building flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006." JOHN adds: Another example of the same phenomenon--not an identical photo, but two...

The interesting thing about the scandal surrounding the use of fake photoshopped pictures from the fighting in Lebanon is that it is BIG NEWS everywhere EXCEPT in the Lamestream Media where there is barely a mention of it. On the Web, TECHNORATI shows "Reuters" as the #1 search item, "Lebanon" as #2, and Reuters fake photo photographer, "Adnan Hajj" at #3. So why the disconnect? One might as well ask why newspaper circulation is plummeting or why Network News viewership is steadily declining. In fact, this fake photo story probably wouldn't have even become big news had it not...

Monday, August 7, 2006REUTERS PULLS ANOTHER FAST ONE Reuters. Let me think ... isn't that the news agency that has refused to call Islamic terrorists what they are ... Islamic terrorists! Yes, by golly, I think they're the ones! And Reuters has also been accused of staging photos at the site of the Israeli bombing of that building in Qana? But Reuters wouldn't do anything like that, would it? Well ... as a matter of fact, they would. Fresh off the accusations that Reuters was staging terrorist casualty photos at Qana, they've been caught monkeying with wire photos again. You...

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...

Fox News just reported that Reuters admits second photo was doctored. Here's the image:

Another photo by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj has been shown to be doctored. The photo, which proports to be of an Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational. Here is the original Reuters photo along with its caption.

A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

Mortician Source Of Qana Death Toll Figures How many coincedences [sic] can one story have before the liberal media realizes what dupes they are? Bishop Hill has noted two sources where the same green helmetted man, who is seen parading dead children’s bodies around Qana and who is probably the ‘mortician’ from Tyre who has a refigerated truck constantly full of dead bodies, is the source of those inflated death toll numbers. Hill points to this article where a journalist was denying any direct responsibility in the Qana Theatre: As far as Qana, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what...

Excerpt - ~ snip ~ Reuters said that it has fired Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese photographer who submitted the image. The organization also said that it is investigating the incident. "The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters. "This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," Whittle said in a statement issued...

LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut. The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week. Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered...

August 06, 2006 Reuters Doctoring Beirut Photos (Updated) Scroll down for updates. The photo below is attributed to Adnan Hajj, of the Reuters news agency. The photo alleges to show smoke covering the Beirut sky. The problem with the photo is that it is that it has been doctored to make it appear that an Israeli missile strike did much more damage than it actually did. Adnan Hajj also took the photos of dead children at Qana. Allegations have arisen that the Qana photos were part of a staged event put on by Hezbollah operatives. There is no doubt...

OK, now things are getting weird. This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image. (Hat tip: Mike.) It’s so incredibly obvious, it reminds me of the faked CBS memos. Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There’s really no question about it. Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many...

An LGF reader has forwarded the following email (I suppose you could say our reader “leaked” it), sent to all Associated Press employees, congratulating themselves on the propaganda photos from Qana and awarding the photographers cash prizes: "Dear Staffers: Last Sunday proved to be one of the most dramatic days in the war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. AP’s extensive photo team produced a stunning series of images that day that beat the competition and scored huge play worldwide. Rumors surfaced early Sunday morning that an Israeli airstrike had flattened a house in the southern Lebanese village of...

MIA Peter Arnett magically appears in Vietnam journo reunion pic In its December 2005 issue, Vanity Fair magazine manipulated a photograph to make it appear that veteran journalist Peter Arnett was among a group of war correspondents gathered on a teeming Ho Chi Minh City street during a reunion of the Vietnam press corps. In fact, according to a source familiar with the photo shoot, Arnett was not present when photographer Jonas Karlsson shot a group portrait of eight journalists last April. Instead, the former CNN star (who covered the war for the Associated Press) was subsequently photographed solo and...

A pornographic website that said it featured "actors" portraying U.S. GIs gang-raping Iraqi women has been shut down by its operator after WND reported two Arabic websites were presenting the photos as proof of American crimes. The American website, "Iraq Babes," was shut down by its registrant, Linda MacNew. MacNew released this statement to WND: I want to start by saying how appalled I am at this whole thing. The site iraqbabes.com is one of our client's sites that we had purchased for him as part of a hosting package that he ordered. Even though we knew it would be...

Graphic photos appearing on Arabic websites of U.S. servicemen raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were actually taken from American and Hungarian pornography sites. Albasrah.net and a Tunisian website produced in France by Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein [Comité de Défonce de Saddam Hussein En Tunisie], posted not only the recently broadcast photos of U.S. troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners but additional ones of alleged group rape of women by American soldiers, some who are depicted holding rifles against their victims' heads. The Tunisian site described the photos as the "unedited" versions of actual events and Albasrah...

Graphic photos appearing on Arabic websites of U.S. servicemen raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were actually taken from American and Hungarian pornography sites. Albasrah.net and a Tunisian website produced in France by Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein [Comité de Défonce de Saddam Hussein En Tunisie], posted not only the recently broadcast photos of U.S. troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners but additional ones of alleged group rape of women by American soldiers, some who are depicted holding rifles against their victims' heads. The Tunisian site described the photos as the "unedited" versions of actual events and Albasrah...

THIS IS A TIMELY REPOST AS CLINTON AND KERRY TRY TO SHOUT THE TRUTH DOWN AND USE ABU GHAIB TO RUIN PRESIDENT BUSH.Graphic photos appearing on Arabic websites of U.S. servicemen raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were actually taken from American and Hungarian pornography sites. Albasrah.net and a Tunisian website produced in France by Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein [Comité de Défonce de Saddam Hussein En Tunisie], posted not only the recently broadcast photos of U.S. troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners but additional ones of alleged group rape of women by American soldiers, some who are...