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AP Shuts Down Blogger With Threats of Legal Action Well, here is what might be a landmark case for the blogosphere, for the Internet, and for the future of our new media, citizen journalism. The AP has just sent a cease and desist letter to Brian C. Ledbetter telling him to stop using their copyrighted images on his website, snappedshot.com. Snappedshot.com is a site predicated on criticism of photo-journalism. In pursuit of his criticism, Mr. Ledbetter uses photos from across the web that he thinks are doctored or misleading in some way. He then reports his opinion on the bias...

Editor quits, paper apologizes over doctored photo Updated: 2008-02-19 07:56 A newspaper apologized Monday and its chief editor resigned over a fake picture scandal, in which a photographer manipulated images to show Tibetan antelopes roaming under a bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Photographer Liu Weiqiang's fake shot that appears to show Tibetan antelopes crossing near a bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet railway as a train passes. [china.com] The Daqing Evening News, based in the oil city of Daqing, Heilongjiang province, said in a statement on its website: "We sincerely apologize to Chinese Central Television (CCTV), Xinhuanet and other media that published...

Photos Posted Below the Fold The Jerusalem Post caught another fauxtography scam out of the mideast this week. It appears that Hamas legislators have staged fake power outages to illustrate how oppressed they are for the benefit of journalists. The Journalists were treated to a photo op of the Hamas legislators sitting in their halls of power surrounded by burning candles in rooms with curtains drawn. The scene was set to show how they have had their power cut by the eeeevil Jews. Only problem is, midday sunlight can clearly be seen against the curtains. So, the candles were unnecessary....

Who does the 'Pallywood' photos for EuroNews?   Dec. 26, 2007   The latest bias "report" out of: http://EuroNews.net. TV.    Euro news has a feature of 'no comment', it is at the bottom of each round-up round, usually intended to show a message: "a picture is worth a thousand words". http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=nocomment&lng=1   The only problem is that when a picture is not spontaneous but orchestrated, a picture is then worthless of course.   Too bad that EuroNews doesn't "know" this, to show a latest example of outrageous anti Israel bigoted propaganda, just another 'Pallywood' [http://seconddraft.org] piece, the Islamo-Arab "Palestinians" realizing...

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week. Geoff Morrell, Pentagon Press Secretary had this...

At long last, prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein may get his day in court. The trouble is, justice won't be blind in this case -- his lawyer will be. Bilal has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since he was picked up April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, a violent town in a turbulent province where few Western journalists dared go. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents. This week, Editor & Publisher magazine reported the military has amended that to say he is, in fact, a "terrorist" who had "infiltrated the AP." We...

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented. An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months. A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as...

Has the Al Dura trial had its Rosemary Woods missing tapes moment? It certainly sounds that way. PJM’s Nidra Poller has the latest on the ongoing trial in Paris over what has been called “The Mother of All Fauxtography.” The Mohammed Al-Dura drama reached a climax as France 2’s auteur, who had up till now not appeared in court, took the stand. Charles Enderlin came to court personally today to defend the images shot by his trusted cameraman Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000. The cameraman had declared under oath that he...

PJM PARIS….FLASH: The French Appellate court trial of Phillippe Karsenty in the matter of Mohammed Al Dura - the epochal case of the Palestinian boy allegedly shot by Israeli troops in 2000 - took a huge turn today. Photos of the boy have been accused of being the birth of fauxtography. For the first time the court has ordered France 2 to produce the original tapes that could prove the whole enterprise a fake. FIRST DISPATCH Appellate Court Presiding judge Laurence Trébucq has demanded that France 2 hand over the 27-minutes of raw footage shot on the afternoon of September...

Terrorist Propaganda Picture of the Week. An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.

They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth. Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers. Killing field: A German machine gun unit strafes No Man's Land at Passchendaele as artillery shells churn up hte ground and mustard gas billows over the front What was once pretty countryside...

Hizbullah won the Second Lebanon War by achieving a propaganda victory over Israel, a Harvard University study has concluded. Aided and abetted by a compliant and credulous press, Hizbullah achieved victory by convincing the world that Israel was the aggressor and that Israel's retaliatory offensive was a "disproportionate" response to the kidnapping and killing of its soldiers.

Paper Photog Quits Over Altered Picture Monday April 9, 2007 11:01 PM By JOHN SEEWER Associated Press Writer TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - A staff photographer for The Blade who digitally altered a front-page photo has resigned, the newspaper said Monday. Allan Detrich had told Blade editors that he altered a photo of a college baseball team for his personal files and mistakenly sent it to the newspaper. The photo showed Bluffton University players kneeling March 30 at their first game after a bus crash killed five players in Atlanta. Photos of the team in other Ohio newspapers showed the legs...

The Los Angeles Times gives credence to Iran’s bogus claim that the US is behind two recent attacks in Iran: Iran alleges U.S. link to militant attack. TEHRAN — Bullet cartridges bearing a U.S. insignia and English lettering were among the weaponry seized last week from Sunni militants suspected of killing 11 members of Shiite-dominated Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, Iranian officials said Sunday. A photo of the cartridge box, along with an array of other ammunition, was published by Iranian newspapers and news agencies. Iran did not provide access to the weapons and explosives, drawing skepticism from analysts, and there...

At Iran’s Fars News Agency, LGF readers tipped me off to a blatant Photoshop fraud in an article claiming to have discovered US weapons in Iran: Terrorists Use US-Gifted Arsenals. (Beware. The Fars News site resizes your browser window without asking, and may attempt other more sneaky things.) TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Following a Saturday report about the use of US manufactured weapons in the recent terrorist operations in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan, a security official provided FNA with a photograph of the said weaponry.These arsenals have been confiscated during a raid on the hideout of a...

new information about the Reuters Photoshop scandal: Reuters fired a top photo editor for the Middle East during an internal investigation of two doctored photos from the Israel-Lebanon war that were published last summer. The editor was the second casualty of the photo manipulation controversy surrounding Reuters freelancer Adnan Hajj. Two of Hajj’s photographs showed obvious signs of digital alterations. Facing a storm of criticism last August, Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj and pulled more than 900 of his photos from its archive. A Reuters spokesperson said Thursday that the company would not release the name of the editor...

LONDON (Reuters) - Reuters named a new chief photographer for the Middle East on Thursday and said it had tightened its editing procedures after the publication last year of two photographs that had been digitally altered. The measures were among several steps announced by David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of the global news and information agency, following an internal investigation that he said had resulted in disciplinary action. The two photos, both of Israeli military action in Lebanon during the war there last August, were taken by a freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj. Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj following an initial inquiry...

Reuters' 2007 exclusive desk calendar loses some of its gloss. 2006 was a bad year for Reuters. The "Fauxtography" scandal called into question the media agency's entire modus operandi and the apparent lack of supervision that allowed Adnan Hajj's doctored photos to get past the photo editors. As 2007 begins, Reuters' newly appointed editor-in-chief David Schlesinger will barely have time to settle into his new office before being confronted with the organization's latest gaffe: Click on image to view the entire calendar Caption reads: A Palestinian militant marches during funerals for Palestinians killed by Israeli troops, in the Maghazi Refugee...

Editor and Publisher seems hardly able to hold back their excitement over the possibility that someone has found proof of the existence of the mysterious "Captain Jamil Hussein" who the Associated Press claimed as a source for the supposed burning of 6 Sunni Iraqis in retaliation for the depredations of that sect on their Shi'ite neighbors. In a Sunday posting on their site, E&P is crowing about "Conservative Bloggers in the U.S." eating crow. Though far from definitive proof, it was strong enough to cause at least one conservative blogger to wonder if those who had mocked the AP might...

Women cry behind a coffin containing the body of their relative, in front of Imam Ali hospital in Baghdad's Sadr city November 27, 2006. Their relative was killed during Sunday's clashes in north Baghdad.

Time Magazine Gets Caught Lying Time Magazine Contradicts Eye-Witness Account Would an editor who had never visited the scene of a photograph deliberately contradict the photographer's account of events? Is it possible that someone would change a caption that ends up incorrectly describing what took place? Moreover, would a prominent media outlet accept the claims of a terrorist organization over that of its own photographer? Sounds hard to believe, but according to recent revelations by a photojournalist, this is exactly what happened with a photograph that was featured in Time Magazine during Israel's conflict with Hizbollah. A few months ago, Time Magazine published the above photograph with...

Early on in the Lebanon war, there was a photograph published by both U.S. News and World Report and Time Magazine, which according to captions published with the picture was of a burning Israeli jet, shot down by Hezbullah missiles. The blogosphere was quick to call B.S. on the photo, and the widely-circulated story was that the photograph was actually that of a tire dump. Well, it seems that the photographer responsible for taking the photograph, Bruno Stevens, has finally sounded off on Lightstalkers, explaining the photograph and telling the true story of how things ended up the way they...

MU is investigating allegations that images accompanying research published by MU professor of reproductive biology R. Michael Roberts in a prominent academic journal were digitally altered. (snip) Roberts’ research, published in the Feb. 17 issue of Science, a weekly, peer-reviewed journal, challenged the conventional view on the properties of the first two cells in a mouse embryo and, according to Hall, has potential implications for stem cell research. (snip) The current issue of Science includes an Editorial Expression of Concern, by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Donald Kennedy, alerting readers that the research “may not be reliable” and that MU is conducting...

How the Dems Support the Troops Remember that photo at the top of The Democratic Party’s page, of a crowd of people cheering and pumping their fists? The theme is that only the Democrats really support the troops, and this is the page where they previously featured a faked image of a Canadian soldier. Well, the irony doesn’t stop there, because that crowd photo doesn’t even show a real group of people genuinely supporting the US military. It’s another stock image. (Hat tip: Raymond.) Note the keywords. Several other bloggers have remarked that the crowd picture seemed oddly out...

A military guy e-mails a weekend website blooper: Thought you might be interested in posting this. The DNC website has a page called Veterans and Military Families where they purpo[r]t to care about the welfare of US troops. Unfortunately they couldn't even find a picture of a US soldier to post on the page. The picture in the Get Involved frame is not a US Army uniform. The soldiers in the background are not in a US uniform either. My military correspondent says the uniform in the DNC photo...is Canadian. Is he right?

The Government Press Office held a meeting with heads of foreign news agencies earlier this month to protest the doctoring of photographs of the recent Lebanon war and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, and warned them that action could be taken against them if this practice continued, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The director of the Government Press Office, Danny Seaman, told the Post Israel reserved the right to act against any media outlets working out of Israel if they "fail to conduct themselves in a professional manner." The foreign journalists' coverage of the Lebanon war was discussed, with...

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...

Ah, it's so refreshing when one sees a series of photographs distinctly framed with the intent of inflaming anger. Take this series of photographs, for instance. Ordinarily, you can find our press far behind enemy lines, offering aid and comfort to the enemy. In this series, however, we see our able fauxtographers carefully positioned with the Israelis. Their intent? Well, how about I just let the photographs speak for themselves.

On September 18, Iranian-born, Dallas businesswoman Anousheh Ansari (bio here) and two astronauts are scheduled to blast off in a Russian Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Ansari replaced Japanese-born businessman Daisuke Enomoto, who was pulled from the flight for medical reasons. The Iranian news media has not made too much of the first Iranian woman scheduled to go into space, but there have been a number of reports about it and this Iranian space site has a number of pictures. So it is interesting to me that one of the photos has clearly been photoshopped...

During Israel’s recent war in Lebanon, bloggers again demonstrated that armchair amateurs can be more perceptive than professional journalists. First, they proved that news photographers had participated in staged war-zone shoots calculated to increase the pathos of Lebanese civilian casualties. Then they exposed an even bigger scandal: a Reuters photographer, Adnan Hajj, had used photo-editing software to insert billowing black smoke into a picture of Beirut and to alter a photo of an Israeli jet to make it look as though it were dropping bombs. The proprietors of such blogs as Little Green Footballs, Power Line, Zombietime, and the Jawa...

The father of all fauxtography By Michelle Malkin   ·   September 12, 2006 03:54 PM The staging of pro-terrorist photos for the theater of jihad has been going on a long time. I've blogged before about a notorious incident involving iconic images of a Palestinian boy, Mohammed al Doura, broadcast by French state-owned television in 2000. The boy was allegedly gunned down by Israeli soldiers. But as Nidra Poller and David Gelernter, among others, have reported, the truth was not on the terror sympathizers' side. See also Pallywood and the investigation by Richard Landes here. Now France-2 TV is suing critics...

A new film depicts President Bush being assassinated. Should it be shown? * 55345 responses Yes, it's a good display of free speech. 52% No, the filmmakers have gone too far. 43% Perhaps -- but not in the United States. 5.2%

AHMED FAWAZ sits in a wheelchair in a sweat-stained hospital gown, smoking a cigarette in the sweltering heat. He was discharged from a Beirut hospital this week, after losing his leg when a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance he was in with his family came under an Israeli air attack in south Lebanon on July 23. The incident near the village of Qana left his son Mohammed, 12, scarred by shrapnel. The attack on two ambulances ferrying the injured between Tibnin and Tyre was widely reported by the international media. Yet the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has condemned press coverage of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. economy may be in recession, based on Midwest manufacturing data, a report said on Thursday. According to Kingsbury International, a partner of NAPM Chicago which puts out The National Association of Purchasing Management-Chicago business barometer, "the U.S. economy could be in a recession at this time." "In four of the last five recessions, the slowing of the Chicago business barometer signaled a recession either one or two years later," the report said. Copyright 2006 Reuters

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...

by Mark Finkelstein August 30, 2006 - 13:49 In the wake of the fauxtography scandals of the recent Middle East conflict, you might think that the MSM would be particularly careful to avoid tinkering with photos. And if there is one TV news operation you would imagine would be particularly gun-shy about altered documents, it would be the Memogate network - CBS. Apparently not. The photo on the left is Katie's official CBS photo. The one to the right is to be found in the CBS "Watch" Magazine. Whoops. You know, they say it's all about the accessories. That little...

I've written columns on news fakery the past two weeks. In response to last week's column, where I talked about video fakery, reader Jim May emails: "In a recent TCS Daily column, you wrote the following: "'So far, video-photoshopping isn't as common as fakery with still photos, but as the tools for that improve, we'll see that, too.' "I am a visual FX artist working in Hollywood (recent credits include 'Serenity', NBC's 'Surface' and as of tonight, 'Beerfest'). I make fake images, moving AND still, for a living. I have the tools required to do precisely this sort of thing...

Katie Couric slimmed down in the blink of a CBS eye. Tiffany Network officials admitted yesterday that an airbrushed photo making the bubbly broadcaster appear several dress sizes smaller appeared in its promotional magazine "Watch!" The incoming "CBS Evening News" anchor said she didn't know about the digitally doctored photo until the September issue of the quarterly glossy landed on her desk. "I liked the first picture better because there's more of me to love," the 49-year-old former NBC "Today" show host said, laughing off the manipulated publicity shot.

August 30, 2006 -- Talk about a miracle diet - Katie Couric has become the Incredible Shrinking Anchorwoman. Thanks to a computer "slight" of hand, the Tiffany network has made the new face of "CBS Evening News" instantly drop about 20 pounds. In a picture widely distributed to the media last month, a normal-looking Couric wore a frumpy light gray suit and her trademark smile. But thanks to Photoshop, the popular editing software, the same photo, printed in a CBS magazine, shows her looking much, much thinner - and her suit has become a few shades darker.

CBS News Unveils New Couric Web Ad CampaignNew York, August 30, 2006(CBS) CBS News announced Wednesday a new internet-based advertising campaign to promote the premier of Katie Couric as the new anchorwoman of "The CBS Evening News". CBS News President Sean McManus made the following statement:"We here at CBS News - which, if you haven't heard, is the new home of Katie Couric - want to reach out to former audience members who, in a bout of confusion, seem to now prefer highly questionable internet based news sources rather than the traditional trusted evening news broadcast. We would also like...

Sacrificing truth on the altar of diversity By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | August 30, 2006 YOU'RE A publisher of children's textbooks, and you have a problem. Your diversity guidelines -- quotas in all but name -- require you to include pictures of disabled children in your elementary and high school texts, but it isn't easy to find handicapped children who are willing and able to pose for a photographer. Kids confined to wheelchairs often suffer from afflictions that affect their appearance, such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. How can you meet your quota of disability images if you...

"Talk about a waistline touch-up," an e-mailer says: The left photo is the official first-pic-of-Katie released by CBS at this year's upfront. (TVNewser posted it in May.) The right photo is an edited version of the same photo, from the September issue of Watch magazine, which is owned by CBS. (Here's the PDF of the magazine.)

Veteran U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, right, walks past an anti-U.S. banner placed among the rubble of a building that was destroyed following Israeli bombardment during the 34-day long Hezbollah-Israel war, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006. Jackson, who said Tuesday that an Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian militants and two others held captive by Hezbollah are alive, also said Syria, a main backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah, wanted to be involved in a prisoner swap that included the three Israelis and Syrian nationals detained by Israel in the Golan Heights....

THE International Committee of the Red Cross has rebuked Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for relying on an unverified internet blog to claim an Israeli missile strike on one of its ambulances in southern Lebanon was a hoax. A spokeswoman for the ICRC in Geneva said yesterday there was no evidence to support Mr Downer's assertion that the international media had been duped in reporting that Israel had deliberately targeted the ambulance. An image of the roof of the ambulance showed what was purportedly an entry hole allegedly made by an Israeli rocket which had pierced the centre of the red...

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...

Reuters does it again. A classic propaganda Kodak moment courtesy of Reverend Jesse Jackson (and son): U.S civil rights leader Jesse Jackson (R) inspects buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs that were damaged by the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbollah, August 29, 2006. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir. And to think some say Reuters "stages" their photos.

What are we seeing when we watch events from the Middle East on our television screens? Is it news or is it terrorist theater? Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout the world. At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised the Palestinians. Centanni said, "I just hope this never...

Does the mainstream press ever wonder why conservatives distrust them so much? If so, they need look no further than the “fauxtography” scandals of the last couple of weeks. Conservative bloggers have been hard at work sniffing out suspected fakery and staging in the photos sent back on the newswires from the Israel/Hezbollah conflict, and the investigation got pretty smelly. First, there was Reutersgate, in which the international news organization had to pull a photo and fire a freelance photographer because he clumsily Photoshopped thicker smoke into the skyline of Beirut. This incident got bloggers wondering what other photographic evidence...

You would think that Reuters learned its lesson about publishing to the world photos doctored to create a false image. After all, they were caught with multiple false photos from Lebanon, and had to take down more than 900 images from one stringer. Reuters promised it would have "experienced editors" look at all such photos in the future.