Effects of cost-cutting are felt in Reuters flap (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Los Angeles Times ^ | August 19, 2006 | Tim Rutten

[abb]

BEFORE the American news media's collective shrug consigns the Reuters photo scandal to the nether world of shabby journalistic footnotes, one of this affair's wider implications is worth a moment's exploration.

The incident began when Los Angeles-based blogger Charles Johnson and one of his readers detected a freelance photographer for the Reuters news agency manipulating pictures of the fighting in Lebanon. They, along with other online press monitors, soon turned up not only doctored images, but also numerous staged and falsely captioned pictures by various photographers — all designed to incite outrage against Israel. Reuters fired Adnan Hajj, the photojournalist involved, and purged its digital archives of more than 400 images he had sold them. The agency also said that, in the future, a more senior editor would review photos from Lebanon before they are transmitted to Reuters' clients.

That's all well and good, but the lingering question is how these patently phony pictures were distributed in the first place and why they weren't detected by the news organizations that received them? (It's certainly possible that some photo editors spotted them, raised their eyebrows in suspicion, tossed the images away and moved on without saying anything. That's another issue and outside the scope of this discussion.)

[abb]

Monday Morning Good News...

[abb]

Raoul's First Law of Journalism
BIAS = LAYOFFS

[mewzilla]

That's another issue and outside the scope of this discussion.

Snort.

[abb]

Ping

[JerseyDvl]

How is manufacturing the news effecting Rooters?

[Beagle8U]

Roto-Reuter got reamed.

[IncPen]

(It's certainly possible that some photo editors spotted them, raised their eyebrows in suspicion, tossed the images away and moved on without saying anything. That's another issue and outside the scope of this discussion.)

Giving themselves the benefit of the doubt?

Name the last time a conservative got the benefit of the doubt from anyone in the MSM...

[PajamaTruthMafia]

Reuters picture desk was a journalistic accident waiting to happen — and it did.

Thanks for the ping!

[cwb]

"Name the last time a conservative got the benefit of the doubt from anyone in the MSM.."

---

Never happens. I remember the Republican ad that displayed the word "Democrat"...which when viewed frame by frame, stopped at "rat" for a nano-second. For days the media and punditry accused the GOP of purposely using subliminal advertising.

[IncPen]

I remember the Republican ad that displayed the word "Democrat"...which when viewed frame by frame, stopped at "rat" for a nano-second. For days the media and punditry accused the GOP of purposely using subliminal advertising.

I used to drive liberals nuts pointing out that that was probably intentional by Karl Rove, and that it simply engaged the MSM to play the thing a million times as a 'news story', when it otherwise would have never seen the light of day....

[Balding_Eagle]

They're so dumb, if they had let it go, they'd be Dems instead of RATS today.

See my tagline

[Grampa Dave]

This gets so embarrassing.

Apparently there were 920 photos by this fauxtographer removed by Rooters.

Also, Rooters might have been paying him under another name.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184242.php

[george76]

Rooters cheating !

Shocked...just shocked.


.../s

.