Posted on 08/10/2006 8:10:53 PM PDT by SmithL
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 the most esteemed media outlets.
More than a dozen accusations of staged or doctored photographs have made their way through various Web sites in the past several weeks. None has been treated by the news outlets as seriously as the original Reuters incident, which saw the photographer Adnin Hajj fired and over 900 of his photos removed from the Reuters wire list. But numerous other outlets - including the BBC, The New York Times and AP - have been forced to recall photos or change captions following inaccuracies pointed out in online forums.
The fact that the online community rather than fellow mainstream media has become a watchdog of accuracy has surprised many who originally derided blogs as being "devoid of accuracy."
"In a blog you don't have to be accurate to anyone but yourself and your readers," said Laya Millman from the Jewlicious.com blog. "There is a great deal of accountability because, if you get anything wrong, the readers will quickly, very quickly, point it out."
As was demonstrated in the case with the Reuters photograph, blogs come with their own teams of investigators: the thousands of readers who stream through the site. Within hours of Charles Johnson's posting on Little Green Footballs, readers of the Web site had gone to work uncovering an array of damning evidence against Hajj, the most serious of which - a second doctored photograph, an Israeli plane altered to make it look as though it was dropping a series of bombs - may have pushed Reuters to fire Hajj after initially announcing that the freelance photographer would be suspended. That photograph, which was discovered by blogger Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report, included an illustrated account of how the photos had been doctored.
Photographs whose veracity has been questioned by blogs in the past few weeks since Reutersgate began include:
# Two pictures used by The Associated Press and Reuters, in which the same woman appeared to be crying over the destruction of her Beirut home. Distinguished by a red-checkered scarf and scar on her right cheek, the woman was pictured crying in front of two different locations two weeks apart.
# Several photographs of a bombed bridge in Beirut which appear on Reuters and AFP with the different captions stating that the bridge had been bombed on July 18, July 24 and August 5. Bloggers claim that the striking image was photographed to look like several different bombings in order to make destruction in Beirut appear more severe.
# In The New York Times photo essay "Attack on Tyre," a photograph of a man who appears dead is accompanied with the caption reading "bodies were still buried under the rubble." However, in a later photograph in the same series, the same man appears to be walking in the foreground of a photo. The Times issued a correction for the first photograph, stating that the man was injured.
Some claim that the online controversy over the photos has gotten out of hand, with many blogs now launching investigations and hurling accusations at a variety of news sources.
"These accusations can be very damning, and need to be handled with care and not thrown out by any angry blogger," said one anonymous poster on Little Green Footballs.
In the meantime, however, Little Green Footballs - along with many other online forums - has been flooded with investigations into mainstream media, with the entire army of its hundreds of thousands of readers eagerly at hand.
BWAHAHA,These accusations ARE damning and indefensible unless you are a dishonest person or organization(as we all know they are).
LGF is a great blog.
Looks like the UN may be taking action against Israel based on the 'ACCURACY' of the fake pictures:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681610/posts
UN Human Rights Council to convene on Israel
Now I can't help but wonder if any of these photographers were acting on a grant from the HRC???
Back in the early fifties, SERUTAN (nature spelled backward), a supplement, used before and after photos of blood cells. I cut out the two pictures and shifted the after up and to the right and overlayed it on the before and they were the same. Bogus photos are not new.
>>Charles Johnson of LGF was really hoping that the
>>scandal would not be dubbed "Reutersgate." I guess he'll
>>be disappointed to learn that the standard _____gate
>>template has been utilized.
I kind of like Fauxtography.
JMHO
Yeah, injured, as the NY Times says in helping out in the rescue effort. Then why is he pictured as pretty much naked? That must have been some injury.
"These accusations can be very damning, and need to be handled with care and not thrown out by any angry blogger," said one anonymous poster on Little Green Footballs.
Oh! Really?
Would that be in the same way the MSM "handles their damning accusations with care"???
Huh?
Is it any surprise that those who routinely twist the news would alter pictures to suit their needs? It is great that a whole legion of people are out there to act as a quality control mechanism for the media.
Ping
I can only imagine how out of hand the media would be had Israel staged photos of the dead and injured and enhanced the images of damage done within their cities.
Rusty Shackelford here picitured, is also a contributor to the Gribble Report.
ping :)
Who coined the word "fauxtography?"
It is catching on.
This has been going on for years, even with your local police and paper.
Look closely the next time you see your local sheriff torching a pile of pot plants.....with all the buds picked off.
I like PhotoFraud more than ReuterGate, but the "gate" suffix has come to mean scandal.
http://www.aish.com/movies/JP/PhotoFraud.asp
NOT JUST MULTIPLE REUTERS-OTHER NEWS OUTLETS-DOZENS OF FAKE PHOTOS
NYTIMES SLIDE SHOW, AP, USNEWS & WORLD REPORT,PROP PLACEMENT OF DISNEY CHARACTERS/TOYS,TIRES BURNING IN DUMPS,SAME CIVILIAN ACTORS IN MULTIPLE SLIDES ...
PHOTO FRAUD IN LEBANON
AISH.COM'S NEW MOVIE
BTT
However, this misrepresentation by the MSM is more than torching a potted plant; it is inciting violence and just unadulterated propaganda!
| discovered by Little Green Footballs | ||
| doctored photo | real photo | |
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| discovered by Jawa Report | ||
| doctored photo | highlights of cloning in photo | |
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| discovered by various sources same neighborhood detroyed twice? |
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| CAPTION: 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) | CAPTION: 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) | |
| discovered by Drinking From Home Blog same woman has home destroyed twice? |
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| CAPTION: 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 | CAPTION: 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.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla) | |
| From Aug 2, 2006 AP Story | |
| Headline: | Heavy Equipment Used to Bury the Dead |
| Story lead-in | BAALBEK, Lebanon -- People in a village outside this Hezbollah stronghold used a front-end loader's scoop to carry away some of the dead Wednesday after a night of Israeli airstrikes and a commando raid inside Baalbek that residents said killed at least 15 civilians... |
| Accompanying photo |  |
| discovered by Little Green Footballs | ||
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| original caption: | corrected caption: | |
| A Relative carries the body of Rajaa Abu Shaban, into Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. An Israel air strike against Islamic militants in Gaza City on Wednesday killed three people, including 5-year-old Rajaa Abu Shaban, and wounded two more, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. The Israeli army said its forces attacked a 'terrorist training camp' in Gaza, but gave no further details. (AP photo/Adel Hana) | On Thursday, doctors said that the 5-year-old Palestinian girl initially believed to have been killed by an Israeli military strike Wednesday apparently died after sustaining head injuries during a fall from a swing in the same area shortly before the strike.(AP Photo/Adel Hana) | |
| discovered by Gateway Pundit | ||
NY Times photo and caption of "dead young man" with shorts and a baseball cap (under his arm) 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) |
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| additional photos from same NYT series. Can you spot the "dead guy" (with shorts & b-ball cap) at the right of each photo? | ||
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| discovered by EU Referendum | ||
| photos of green helmet guy parading corpses after Israeli airstrike in Qana | ||
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| discovered by Germany's NDR: | ||
Was this the same Green Helment Guy parading corpses around in Qana in 1996?? |
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| Watch German video of Green Helmet Guy parading the dead bodies and directing cameras at what to record. | ||
| Sample screen-captures here: | ||
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