Another Fake Reuters Photo from Lebanon

The Jawa Report ^ | August 06, 2006

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

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.

[mypetjawa]

I don't know much about him, but I did do an extensive Google search on him yesterday and checked out every link. He appears to work mostly in Lebanon. In the past, he has worked for the AP, in addition to his current (former) Reuters job. When the bloodshed in Lebanon is at a minimum, he also does sports photography. He did extensive work during the Cedar Revolution. He's a respected journalist in Lebanon, as evidenced by the fact that he has given lectures at the Lebanese American University. He also has worked in the Palestinian territories a few years back and helped spread anti-Israeli propaganda. Does this sound familiar?

While perusing the online photo archives of Reuters, I couldn't help but notice that the same corpse of a child was repeatedly photographed with different people carrying it. Was it staged or candid? I really don't know, but deliberate or not, it does give the illusion of additional casualties. Suspicions are raised even further now that IMRA disclosed that two Palestinian children who died in the Rafah procession incident were murdered by Palestinian gunmen and that the IDF photographed the shooting. If you doubt the authenticity of this report, please note that it was first reported in Haaretz by Amir Oren on May 21st. Meanwhile in the oft photographed morgue, a lone child is repeatedly photographed in different locations of the room as he sits over assorted groupings of bodies. A spontaneous photographic opportunity or was it posed for propaganda purposes? .... These are the names of the photographers and photojournalists from AP, Reuters and AFP who covered the action for the Palestinian side of the street in Gaza these past two weeks....Adnan Hajj Ali

Source: http://www.think-israel.org/may04bloged.html via The Jawa.

[RegulatorCountry]

That's the space shuttle, breaking up during reentry, over Palestine, Texas.

[ReignOfError]

Does anyone have any biographical information on Hajj?

Lebanese, according to the Reuters press release. Not surprising, since he's in Lebanon. Staff photographers can't be everywhere, so news agencies tend to have local stringers all over the place.

From my point of view, the scandal isn't that the photographer was crooked, but that the clumsy fake made it onto the wire. Looks like the pursuit of greater speed came at the cost of less oversight.

[VeniVidiVici]

That's the space shuttle, breaking up during reentry, over Palestine, Texas.

Yup. I had to find the picture because the first thought in my mind was that old Haji couldn't resist cutting and pasting from the Columbia breaking up over Palestine, TX.

But, doesn't look like a match.

[El Gato]

Therefore, it is not beyond the realm of possibilities that each smoke trail would be almost identical to the one preceding it.

Yes it is. The flares are at bottom, just flares. It's the spectrum they emit that is sophisticated. The smokes trails are more a function of the backwash from the jet and of the winds aloft. The winds vary by altitude (The jet is diving) and time. The backwash is turbulent flow, with alot of randomness. No way three flares would have the same kinks, with the same spacing, in their smoke trails.

I think the "bombs" are all fake, given the clarity of the jet and the smoke trails, the bombs should be more distinct and bomb looking. I've seen bombs dropped by F-105s, viewed from a similar aspect angle. The aircraft looked smaller if anything(and it's a bigger bird than the F-16) but you could see the individual bombs easilly, and they looked like bombs, not smudges.

[Semi Civil Servant]

any way to get the names of reuters journalists or those they contract with in the middle east just for some googling?

Rotters is now hiring journalists now? A new policy to supplement the antisemitic terrorist hacks currently have working for them?

[El Gato]

Post the URL, someone else will convert it to a hotlink or post the picture itself. To get the URL, right click on the image, select properties, and then copy the URL from their. If you use Mozilla Firefox, you can just select "Copy Image Location) when you right click on the image.

[BJungNan]

Do you think it is fair to equate Dan Rather with every fake news story? Don't you think that is a little harsh? I mean, the poor guy has just ended his career on a very low note.

[justiceseeker93]

Looks like the pursuit of greater speed came at the cost of less oversight.

That would be the most benign of possible interpretations. It is also plausible that the people who were supposed to be doing the "oversight" had the same bias and agenda as Hajj did.

Please see also post # 101, which indicates that Hajj may have been working with the Palestinians in the past.

[justiceseeker93]

...the poor guy has just ended his career on a very low note.

And justly so!

[Rokke]

"Smoke trails would be at the whim of the wind and it's heat not smoke that a missile homes in on."

True, except that the timeframe covered by that single photo is most likely just over a single second. Any wind that effects the smoke of one of those flares would effect the smoke of all of those flares in exactly the same way. And I'm not sure what your point is regarding what missiles home in on. The flares are made to burn at the same intensity and rate creating equal heat sources and as a by product, equal amounts of smoke. Here is another picture of F-16's dispensing flares. This photo is MUCH higher resolution and taken at a much closer range. But despite that, notice how similar the smoke trails of the flares are.

My whole point is that when you've got someone cornered, hit him with your best shots. Don't push something that may or may not be phony. This clown has made bigger screw ups than anything you might be able to pull out of his crappy F-16 photo.

[dr_lew]

It looks that way to me, too. Somebody ought to be able to Google Earth it. That would have to be one mofo mountain to rise behind that ridge like that, not to mention the mofo trees!

[BJungNan]

For us "connection challenged" please elaborate the discrpency. Thanks.

[jiggyboy]

That second pic of her with the big googly eyes is almost self-parody. I giddily anticipate seeing her plopped into a lot of random backgrounds (a la "Tourist Guy") here on FR in the next couple of days and weeks.

[restornu]

Adnan Hajj/Reuters

A wounded civilian being carried away on a stretcher at Maameltain bridge in Lebanon.

Smoke rises from a Hizbollah stronghold in southern Beirut after being hit by Israeli warplanes, July 24, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)

Palestinians wheel a wounded man to the treatment room at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, early Tuesday, July 25, 2006. Late Monday, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a four-story building in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, wounding four, Palestinian security and hospital officials said. The military said the building was used by Islamic Jihad to store weapons. Before the attack, the military called the owner, an Islamic Jihad activist, warning him to get his family out. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Lebanese Islamist stands outside the burning Danish consulate in Beirut February 5, 2006. Angry demonstrators set the Danish consulate in Beirut ablaze on Sunday and the violent turn in protests over publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammad drew condemnation from European capitals and moderate Muslims. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj

Lebanese families who were evacuated from south Lebanon rest in a shelter in Beirut, July 18, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj

Check out this various poses!

LEBANOLLYWOOD ENABLER…Reuters Head of Public Relations Moira Whittle Posted in Uncategorized on August 6th, 2006 Could this be a different ‘Moira Whittle’ than the one who used to work for Al Jazeera………

“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

[Rokke]

"The smokes trails are more a function of the backwash from the jet and of the winds aloft. The winds vary by altitude (The jet is diving) and time. The backwash is turbulent flow, with alot of randomness. No way three flares would have the same kinks, with the same spacing, in their smoke trails."

See my previous response. An F-16 is roughly 50 feet long. The length of those smoke trails is roughly 200 ft long. That jet is conservatively traveling at 480 knots or 800 feet per second. The smoke from those flares has existed for less than a second. Possibly less than half a second. The difference in wind in that altitude delta and timeframe is essentially nothing. And any vortice impact from the jet will hit all the smoke trails equally. I spent 15 years training with those flares. There is absolutely nothing in that picture that strikes me as odd, and a few things that make at least the flares seem completely authentic.

With regard to the "bombs". Who knows. The resolution of the whole picture is pretty poor. You can't even tell the canopy from the rest of the aircraft. For all we know this photo was taken with a telephoto lens from 15 miles away. Which goes back to my original point. There is enough ambiguity in this picture to set it aside and pummel the clown with his more obvious glaring forgeries.

[vharlow]

Check out the child...compare with the children from the Qana ppictures. I swear, this is one of them. This picture I found doing a search for Adnan Hajj.

[vharlow]

I did it@!!!! Unbelievable...that's a first for me!

The label on the picture said:

"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
A Lebanese man holds the body of his child after he was killed during an overnight Israeli airborne operation on the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbeck, 60 miles (100 km) northeast of Beirut, August 2, 2006. Israeli commandoes snatched three Hizbollah members, killing 19 civilians in the raid. (LEBANON)"

I think Baalbeck is quite a ways away from Qana.

[dervish]

Hezbollywood uses extras from Al Reuters. Remember this --


"To be sure, the relationship between journalists covering the conflict and Palestinian terrorist factions has always been uncomfortably close. Nothing illustrates that more starkly than a recent YnetNews.com report about journalists from Reuters who, during a going-away party for a fellow Reuters correspondent, screened a video featuring Zakaria Zubaidi, an Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist who has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians. Sitting in Reuters’ Jenin office, the terrorist posed as a Reuters executive. Reuters’ staff who attended the screening described Zubeidi’s impersonation as “very funny.” A Reuters spokeswoman confirmed the video’s existence, but said the London-based news organization is “not associated with any group or faction in any conflict.”

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19001

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3113222,00.html

[Don Joe]

There is enough ambiguity in this picture to set it aside and pummel the clown with his more obvious glaring forgeries.

Then how do you explain how he's got three trails in one version of the photo, but four trails in another version of it?

Methinks he steppeth on his richard, LOL!

(Discussion on it here.)