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To: blam
The al-Reuters agenda unmasked.

And what agenda is that? Looking at the photos side by side, I don't see how one makes any political point more forcefully than the other. One of my favorite maxims is "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," and this seems like a good case for that.

I once noticed -- and pointed out to the AP -- a pair of faked photos that were later retracted. They were faked by the U.S. Army. They were photos of two soldiers killed in Iraq, and appeared to be the photos from their ID badges. The soldiers had been photoshopped in front of a U.S. flag. There were harsh jagged lines around the silhouette job, and the flag background was pixel-for-pixel identical in both.

My best WAG -- and it's a pretty weak one, but as good as any I can come up with -- is that some newbie screwed up cropping the photo, and in a vast overestimation of his photoshop skills, thought he could fake the cropped-out parts rather than embarrass himself by asking someone up the line to resend.

The more I see, the more I'm inclined to believe that it was not the photographer, because Reuters had the unaltered version readily at hand. In any case, at least two people screwed up -- the person who doctored the image and the person who approved it.

113 posted on 08/06/2006 5:30:02 AM PDT by ReignOfError
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To: ReignOfError
There is a difference between the two cases. In the US Army case, it was the source who did that. In this case, again, assuming you're right that it was not the photographer who did it, it was Reuters who did it. Everybody has agenda, no doubt. But Reuters declares themselves 'independent'. In this case, by adding an effect, they clearly are not.
124 posted on 08/06/2006 5:37:15 AM PDT by paudio (Universal Human Rights and Multiculturalism: Liberals want to have cake and eat it too!)
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To: ReignOfError
And what agenda is that? Looking at the photos side by side, I don't see how one makes any political point more forcefully than the other. One of my favorite maxims is "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," and this seems like a good case for that.

I strongly disagree. It's not mere "incompetence" that the fakery shows a more dramatic amount of damage, over a wider area, than actually occurred.

The political point is perhaps not obvious when removed from the larger context of Hajj's fakery -- he's clearly trying to paint Israel as using excessive force. And the nice man is not alone in this: note, for example, today's backpeddling from claims of "40 killed" to "1 killed" in an Israeli attack.

I find it surprising that someone who paints himself as savvy to the ways and means of media manipulation should be unable to see this faked photo as part of a larger context.

564 posted on 08/07/2006 9:57:45 AM PDT by r9etb
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