1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
Posted on 08/10/2006 7:51:53 AM PDT by van_erwin
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
All of these forms of fraud have the same intent: to serve as propaganda for Hezbollah, and to make the Israeli attacks look as brutal as possible. And, taken together, they raise a very serious question: Can any of the coverage by the entrenched media be trusted?
The ever-growing scandal now involves other news services as well; at the bottom of this page are numerous examples of bias and fraud by other agencies, including Associated Press, The New York Times, and others.
Let's examine each type of fraud, with the photographic evidence itself:
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
This is what has been getting the majority of coverage in the media, because it is the most clear-cut -- even if the actual significance or newsworthiness of the photos involved is not particularly great.
This is the fraudulent photo that has gotten by far the most coverage. This hoax was first exposed on August 5 by Little Green Footballs, when a reader named "Mike" pointed out the photo to LGF's Charles Johnson, who incontrovertibly demonstrated that the image had been altered using the Photoshop "clone" tool. For more info, click on the link above; this case has also been covered extensively throughout the mediasphere.
This is an untouched version of the original photo before it was digitally altered. Reuters released it on August 6 when they admitted the doctored photo was indeed fraudulent, and announced they were no longer going to work with Adnan Hajj, the photographer who had Photoshopped the image. No word on what punishment the editors who released the obviously fake photo to the world would receive. Hajj used the Photoshop "clone" tool to copy portions of the smoke-column and repeatedly paste it into the sky, to make the smoke look larger and darker -- though his manipulations really didn't change the effect of the photo to any great degree. His claims that he accidentally added the extra smoke when he was merely trying to remove some dust flecks from the picture are so absurd as to barely even merit comment.
The other instance of digital photo doctoring was discovered by Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report on August 6. The original Reuters caption for this photo was "An Israeli F-16 warplane fires missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon." As Shackleford pointed out, first of all, those are not missiles depicted in the photo -- they're defensive flares. But more importantly, the photo had been doctored to show three flares, when in fact there had only been one.
This image, also shown on the Jawa Report, demonstrates that the clone tool had again been used to copy portions of the photo and paste them in repeatedly elsewhere. In this case, the trails of one flare were copied and lengthened to make it look like there had been three flares. Click on the link above for a detailed explanation and several more photos proving the case. The photo-hoaxster in this instance was again Adnan Hajj, proving beyond doubt that he was very familiar with how to alter images in Photoshop. Ynet News featured an article on this photo manipulation as well.
After the public outcry over the obviously fake photos, Reuters fired Adnan Hajj and pulled all his photos from distribution, admitting that both photos were doctored. They made no mention of how or why their editors allowed fake photos to be released as real news, perhaps hoping that the firing of Hajj would put an end to the scandal. But Photoshopping images was only one of several ways in which Reuters has committed journalistic fraud during the war in Lebanon.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
This is where the Reuters scandal started: with bloggers noticing that some of the images showing the aftermath of the July 30 air raid on Qana looked fishy. There are by now dozens of different photographs from that day whose authenticity has been seriously questioned, so all I can present here is a small representative sample.
The first series that raised suspicions was this one, pointed out at many blogs, of a green-helmeted "rescue worker" who seems to parade around with the corpse of a child for an extended period of time. The blog EU Referendum had the most complete photo series compilation, showing that each image individually might be accepted as an unposed authentic news photo, but that when one considers all the photos taken that day by Reuters, AP, and Agence France Presse, it becomes obvious that the entire scene was some kind of gruesome theater performance, apparently with actors posing as rescue workers parading around with a few corpses, seemingly posing for the cameras instead of evacuating the bodies as efficiently as possible.
EU Referendum pointed out that if the time stamps on the photos are taken at face value, then the rescue operation becomes even more farcical, with bodies unnecessarily put on display for hours, though the news agencies later claimed that the time stamps do not necessarily reflect the actual time each photo was taken. Lost in the argument over this detail is the fact that the photos were widely doubted even before the time stamp issue, and that even a casual glance at the photo series from Reuters and the other agencies reveals that, in whatever order they were taken, the images seem to reveal at the very least a partly staged scenario, in which unprofessional "rescue workers" seem more concerned with how they and the bodies appear on camera than they do with conducting an actual rescue operation. These doubts were compounded when additional photos of the mysterious "Mr. Green Helmet" were found from other rescue operations in other parts of Lebanon (such as here, for example), at which he similarly seemed to pose for the camera. Many bloggers speculated that he is in fact a Hezbollah "set designer" and media relations officer whose job it is to milk maximum propaganda value from each photo opportunity, with the cooperation of willing photographers, who must witness his shenanigans in person, but not report on them. Ynet News had an excellent article summarizing the different aspects of the Qana photo opportunity.
Another bit of possible staging was uncovered by Cathy Brooks, a reader of Power Line in a series of photos also taken by Hajj and released by Reuters. As the full series of photos displayed at Power Line shows, what are supposed to be real-time shots of "citizens" running across the Qasmiya Bridge, which had been damaged by Israel, must in fact be something else altogether. For not only are the two men running pointlessly back and forth across the same bridge, but one of them magically becomes a "civil defense worker" in the next caption.
But things start to get completely bizarre when in a later photo, the exact same damaged car seems to be quite a distance away, once again on its roof (and notice the other photographer taking a close-up of the car). However, Seerak, an astute photo expert on Little Green Footballs, pointed out in this detailed comment that the photographer may been been alternating between powerful telephoto and wide-angle lenses, which produce only the appearance of the car being moved. If so, then this example belongs more in the "false and misleading captions" section than in this section. The foreshortening is so extreme that it's hard to believe it could be produced simply by different lenses, but it may be possible.
Power Line's analysis finishes with a final photograph of a completely different damaged bridge, which is also identified as the Qasmiya Bridge. The only conclusion one can reach upon seeing these images is that the entire scenario on the first bridge is a fabrication, that the "citizens" are being stage managed to run back and forth, and that the bridge in question was just a convenient theatrical set for the photo shoot, and probably wasn't even the bridge named in the caption.
Incredibly, in response to the initial questions about the Qana pictures, Reuters issued a statement that completely denied any of its photos were staged, stating, "Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged." But their denial has fallen on deaf ears in the blogosphere, as more and more seemingly staged photos are discovered every day.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
Many bloggers have stated that some photo-stringers in Lebanon are not merely willing dupes for Hezbollah propagandists, but occasionally even participate in the staging of scenes themselves. Though this form of fraud is much more difficult to prove, several examples have cropped up of vignettes that just seemed "too good to be true" for them to be naturally occurring scenes.
This Reuters image, for example, which was found in various media outlets (and preserved on the Bagel Blogger site), came with this caption: "A mannequin adorned with a wedding dress stands near the site of an Israeli air raid in Qana July 31, 2006, where more than 54 women and children were killed a day earlier. REUTERS/Sharif Karim (LEBANON)." C'mon -- an explosion large enough to knock down a building happened just a few yards away, and an entire day has passed with hundreds of rescuers and media members and everyone else running around, and after all that, a mannequin in a wedding dress is discovered standing right next to the bomb site, as if posing in front of the wreckage? And that no one noticed it until then? A much more likely explanation is that the photographer -- or someone helping him -- found the mannequin elsewhere, and placed it exactly where he wanted for that "perfect shot."
Dozens of blogs have pointed out similar questions about other artificial-seeming scenes that smacked of the photographers' handiwork. The most comical of these is "The Passion of the Toys" at Slublog:
All of these pictures were taken by Reuters photographers in Lebanon, except for the first Mickey Mouse image which was taken by an AP photographer. While it may be possible that these photographers all just happened to stumble on toys and stuffed animals perfectly positioned for maximum emotive response, the cumulative effect of all the pictures together (along with others visible on Slublog) suggests that some if not all of the photographers moved the toys to be better positioned for a good photo.
But this is not a definitely conclusive example of fraud -- it's almost impossible to prove that a photographer moved an object to his benefit. Instead, the images just feel faked.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
Power Line again drew attention to another form of photojournalistic fraud, this time possibly committed by the Reuters editors themselves. This photo, as Power Line pointed out, was captioned, ""Journalists are shown by a Hizbollah guerrilla group the damage caused by Israeli attacks on a Hizbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, July 24 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)." But look at the next photo below.
Here, the caption says, "A Lebanese woman looks at the sky as she walks past a building flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)." But a cursory glance shows that it's the exact same destroyed buildings in both photos. If they were already destroyed on July 24, they couldn't have been destroyed on August 5, especially since the damage is identical in both pictures. It's quite obvious that photos of the same scene were re-released to make it appear as if Israeli bombing raids were continuously hitting Beirut, when in fact Reuters was just recycling the same damage over and over.
Further demolishing the credibility of this photograph is yet a different image of the same woman by AFP, this time "inspecting the destruction," in a scene in which she is obviously cooperating with the photographer -- contradicting the implication of the Reuters photo in which she is supposed to be just a passerby.
Yet, as was revealed in this article on The Shape of Days site, captions for news photos are mostly written by the editorial staff, with the photographer supplying only the basic facts. It was up to the Reuters editors to properly caption this photo, and if it was misattributed, it is entirely their responsibility.
But wait! As revealed on Little Green Footballs once again, the building was already destroyed as of July 18, according to this picture at Getty Images, which captioned it, "A press photographer takes pictures of the devastated southern Beirut suburbs of Dahyieh Junibiya, 18 July 2006."
So, a building that was demolished before July 18 was recycled again and again as "fresh" damage committed by Israel.
In the next example, as discovered by the Drinking from Home blog, a Lebanese woman somehow had her house destroyed twice, two weeks apart, by the Israelis. In this first photo, Reuters claims, "A Lebanese woman wails after looking at the wreckage of her apartment, in a building, that was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut July 22, 2006. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisi."
But wait! Here she is again, in a photo supplied by AP: "A Lebanese woman reacts at the destruction after she came to inspect her house in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006, after Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed the area overnight." As Drinking from Home points out, it's definitely the same woman. The photo captions, supplied by two different news agencies, contradict each other: one says her home was destroyed on July 22; the other on August 5. Which leads one to question whether the woman had anything to do with the building at all, or if she was just asked to pose in front of it for drama's sake. Either way, the editor's captions are necessarily untrue, since her home obviously couldn't have been demolished twice. The photos may or may not be authentic, but at least one of the captions is a falsehood. Ynet News also featured an article about the discrepancy.
A zombietime reader named Paul writes in to say that this photo that appeared on the cover of the July 22 edition of the London magazine The Spectator as an illustration for this article seems to shows the exact same woman yet again, wailing for the third time over a completely different destroyed home.
A close-up of the somewhat low-resolution image appears to faintly show the distinctive scar on the woman's left cheek, confirming it is her despite the different outfit. As Paul writes, "Once again we see the -- unmistakable -- eyebrowless Wailing Woman coming home only to find her third Beirut apartment destroyed. Different location of course, and this time she is wearing an up-market outfit: aqua silk scarf, checked coat, sling bag over her shoulder and holding car keys. She has apparently just got out of her car, seen the damage, slung the bag over her shoulder -- as you do when you discover your apartment is no more -- and gone for it, the double hand Heavenwards Wail."
If indeed it is the same woman -- which seems quite likely, though we can't say with 100% certainty -- she may simply be an amateur photographer's model taken around to various sites to act distraught in front of different damaged buildings.
These pictures of a Hezbollah gunman -- as pointed out by Hot Air, jester_6 and Riehl World View -- not only appeared on the cover of U.S. News and World Report, but was captioned, "A Hezbollah gunman aims his AK 47 at a fire caused by an explosion in Kfarshima, near Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, July 17, 2006. Lebanese TV stations broadcast video pictures Monday claiming to be an Israeli military aircraft falling to the ground in the area, but Israeli military said no aircraft was shot down over Beirut and there was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the explosion." The photos were taken by both Reuters and AP photographers.
But a close-up reveals that the scene is entirely counterfeit: the fire, as the gunman and the photographers must have known, was nothing more than tires burning in a garbage dump. The captions conveyed the "fact" that the gunman was in a dangerous situation, ready to fire at a downed Israeli aircraft. It's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that Hezbollah set the fire themselves, to provide a dramatic backdrop for an iconic propaganda image.
Theory A: The Reuters editorial staff is sympathetic to the aims of Hezbollah, and is using propagandistic images exaggerating Israeli violence to increase world pressure on Israel to stop its attacks, thereby giving Hezbollah a chance to regroup, and claim moral superiority.
Stage magicians sometimes used what is called the "smoke-and-mirrors" technique, in which chaotic and distracting effects on stage draw the audience's attention away from the magician's sleight-of-hand. According to Theory A, Reuters is resorting to "smoke-and-mirrors" by taking advantage of the chaos of war, and the chaos of the international media coverage, to promulgate staged or contradictory news reports. Working on the assumption that no one person would ever see enough different media outlets to notice the fraud, which only becomes apparent when comparing different images which are published in a wide variety of media outlets, Reuters has slipped the false reports into the news stream.
Doss, a commenter on Little Green Footballs, made a very well researched comment showing the systematic bias in Reuters editorial captions to photos of the war in Lebanon, with links documenting each point. According to Doss, "Every time, if an Israeli is hurt, it was a "rocket" that did it; if a Lebanese/Hizb is hurt, "Israel" did it. Humans hurt Lebanese, but inanimate objects hurt Israelis, according to Reuters." This clearly points to an anti-Israel bias on the part of Reuters.
Theory B: The stringers employed by Reuters are sympathetic to Hezbollah, and successfully duped the Reuters editors into publishing propaganda.
To accept Theory B, you'd have to conclude that the Reuters editorial staff are cataclysmically incompetent, and were unable to notice numerous frauds so obvious that "untrained bloggers" could easily spot them.
Theory C: The stringers employed by Reuters simply wanted to make a name for themselves, and resorted to fraud to obtain the most spectacular images, regardless of their political outlook.
Again, Theory C requires an almost unbelievable level of incompetence on the part of the Reuters editorial staff. This theory is also doubtful because the propagandistic nature of the photos and captions is almost always anti-Israel.
Theory D: Reuters photographers and editors are intimidated by Hezbollah, and publish Hezbollah's propaganda out of fear for their lives.
This is an intriguing theory. There have been reports coming out of Lebanon that reporters are indeed being bullied and intimidated. A new report reveals that Hezbollah has copies of all journalists' passports and that they threaten those who tell the truth. Michael Totten reported last year how he was at first charmed by the Hezbollah media representative -- a relationship which suddenly turned to fear when he was bullied and threatened once Hezbollah realized he wasn't going to repeat their lies. And CNN's Nic Robertson shockingly admitted that his own news reports were stage-managed by Hezbollah in an interview on July 23. In it, Robertson said,
Another description of how Hezbollah intimidates journalists in Lebanon can be found on the Anderson Cooper blog.
So --which of these theories is true? At this stage, it's impossible to tell. The actual truth may be a combination of all four theories.
This scandal casts doubt not just on Reuters' coverage of the current war in Lebanon -- it casts doubt on all media coverage of this war, and of all wars in the past. How long has such chicanery been going on? Could it be that the public for the first time is learning that the media is not as impartial as it has always claimed?
The Scandal Widens to Other News Services
As can be gleaned from the examples above, Reuters is not the only news service involved in some of these bogus photo reports coming out of Lebanon. Photographers from Associated Press and Agence France Presse, in particular, have been present at some of the staged scenes as well, and AP's captions have repeatedly drawn criticism from several bloggers.
The New York Times
On August 8, the New York Times entered the fray, with what looked like a hoax being featured prominently on its site. Gateway Pundit unveiled the ruse, which likely caused the Times to subsequently issue a correction (see below):
In this first image, one of a series on the N.Y. Times site, a man with a greenish cap (on the right) is seen gesturing at the rubble.
In the second image, you can see the same man at the lower right, wearing the same cap and baggy, washed-out trunks.
And in this final picture, the same man is seen -- easily identifiable by his trunks, his hat pressed under his arm, and his distinctive nose -- pretending to be dead as someone else tries to lift his "fallen comrade." The Times captioned the image, "The mayor of Tyre said that in the worst hit areas, bodies were still buried under the rubble, and he appealed to the Israelis to allow government authorities time to pull them out. (Photo Tyler Hicks The New York Times)." The unmistakable implication is that the photo depicted what the caption was describing -- a "body" still buried under the rubble. In other words, the guy is now supposed to be dead.
Here's a clearer version of the final picture. It's not only obvious that the man is still alive and only feigning death, making the scene a staged hoax, but that Tyler Hicks, the photographer, must have known that he was only acting for the camera, since Hicks had taken the earlier pictures as well. Hezbollah and the New York Times teamed up here to create a propagandistic image.
However, after this was publicized on a variety of blogs, Tyler Hicks was interviewed on NPR which featured the same photo on its site, this time -- according to Michelle Malkin -- with an updated caption, now saying that the man "had fallen and was hurt."
The Times then retracted the caption and published a correction that said,
Fauxtography is by no means limited to al Reuters. There has never been such massive fraud in journalistic history, as many media outlets are now peddling ridiculous fauxtos.
Excellent roundup. However, the most insidious thing they do is print false stories, leaving out any information that puts the US or Israel in a postive light, and using anonymous BS sources to bolster the lies.
Expose' ping... this needs to be aired out big time! I hope Rush, Hennety, O'Reilly, etc. really pounce on this.
Our biggest enemy is the one within.
ping
bookmarked
There is a German video showing green Helmet Guy setting up the sad scenes with children's bodies so the media can do their shots...this is also FAUXTOGRAPHY!! The video is here on FR.
There has never been such massive fraud in journalistic history, as many media outlets are now peddling ridiculous fauxtos.
Examples?
No flame
Yet the left keeps right on steaming ahead, "stuck on stupid" as usual.
What an "inconvenient truth" for the media. And yet another in a long list of reasons the MSM is fast becoming irrelevant.
Go to the link below. This Free Republic thread will take you to a video of Green Helmet Guy directing a video with a dead child.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681112/posts
Excellent summary! This clearly proves that "Al-Reuters" should be treated as enemy propaganda.
Bookmarked.
The MSM are willing tools of the propagandists and are themselves creating propaganda. Any wonder why their readership/viewership is dropping. Thank God for the bloggers who are doing what an objective media should be doing.
Check out Little Green Footballs and Michell Malkin for a few of dozens of grossly faked fauxtos that the democrat party lamestream media is publishing these days.
http://michellemalkin.com/
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/
No, this is just the most massive *known* fraud in journalistic history.
Don't kid yourself. This didn't just start this summer.
bttt
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