Bombing of Funeral: False Reporting by Reuters
16:24 Aug 08, '06 / 14 Av 5766
The day after it was revealed that a Reuters News Agency doctored photographs to show an anti-Israel bias, the news service incorrectly reported Tuesday afternoon that the IDF bombed a funeral procession in Lebanon.
Reuters has corrected without apology its earlier story that the IDF strafed a funeral procession and updated the report to state that the bombs struck a village at the same time the funeral was taking place, adding that "the air strike was not in the immediate vicinity of the funeral."
This weekend was not a good one for Reuters.
First, it was revealed by Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog that a photo showing bomb damage in Beirut by a local Muslim stringer, Adnan Hajj, was doctored. Reuters promptly recalled the image and fired the reporter.
Since the original unaltered photo revealed that there really was a large explosion being documented by Hajj, Reuters accepted his excuse that the picture was only altered to "remove some dust marks".
Accusations that the photo was “sexed-up” to make Israeli damage of Beirut seem worse were dismissed. The photo was treated as an isolated incident by Reuters. It wasn't.
Prompted by Charles Johnson's expose, a reader led me to another Reuters photo taken by Adnan Hajj. The photo purported to be of an Israeli F-16 firing "missiles" at a Lebanese village.
That photo was also a fake. The original photo actually showed an Israeli plane firing a defensive flare. The flare had been labeled a "missile" by the reporter and then duplicated several times using computer software to make it seem that multiple "missiles" were being "fired" on a Lebanese "village".
In other words, the F-16 which Reuters purports to show firing missiles at a Lebanese village, was taking defensive measures.
This time the "dust marks" excuse could not fly.
When confronted by a second obvious forgery, Reuters was forced to retract all 920 photos produced by Hajj.
But Reuters is still in denial about several things.
First, Reuters retraction order makes it seem as if the second photo was discovered by an internal investigation. An internal discovery of a second faked photo makes it appear that Reuters is a responsible and objective news organization which takes seriously accusations of impropriety. It is not.
Second, and more importantly, Reuters is in denial that there is an overtly anti-Israeli bias in its reports and their accompanying photos.
Why is it that no one at Reuters caught these two obvious forgeries? It doesn't seem too far fetched to suggest that editors do not scrutinize closely those things that they already believe to be true about Israel. The photos showed what Reuters already knew-- namely, that it is Israel that is responsible for so much death and damage in the present Middle East conflict.
Which is why Reuters is still in denial about many other photos which are not outright forgeries, but which appear to be staged?
Reuters admits publishing distorted Beirut photo, apologizes, pulls pic By israelinsider staff and partners August 6, 2006
The faked photo
Reuters has admitted that one of its published photos has been crudely distorted and, under pressure from bloggers, has "killed" a photo of a Beirut bombing and published an apology. The photographer credited, Adnan Hajj, also was responsible for some of the staged photographs from Qana, such as this one (discretion advised).
The Reuters caption on the doctored photo was: "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut?s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj"
Charles Johnson, published of the Little Green Footballs blog, says that the photo "shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop 'clone' tool to add more smoke to the image. It's so incredibly obvious.... Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There?s really no question about it."
But it's not only the plumes of smoke that were "enhanced," Johnson writes. There are also cloned buildings, which the blog Left and Right illustrated in an animation.
In a published message, Reuters pulled the photo and said that "photo editing software was inappropriately used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvenience."
Reuters employees suspended for death threats A Reuters has suspended an employee for sending a death threat to an American blogger. The message, sent by someone with the address zionistpig@hotmail.com, was: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."
It was sent to Charles Johnson, owner of the Little Green Footballs (LGF) weblog, a popular pro-Israel, anti-Jihad site.
Johnson noted that "This particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News."
He told ynetnews: "I think it's more than fair to say that Reuters has a big problem."
After bringing the threat to the attention of Reuters, Johnson was told by its Global Head of Communications, Ed Williams: "I can confirm that an employee has been suspended pending further investigation. The individual was not an employee of Reuters' news division."
Johnson further traced the movements of the sender of the threat, and found direct parallels between the internet locations of the sender and Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Bunglawala, who contributed an editorial to the Guardian website, has attracted negative attention in the past after making anti-Semitic outbursts, and has declared that the British media was "Zionist-controlled."
In the comment section of the Guardian, underneath his own editorial, Bunglawala denied sending the threat, blaming "Zionists" instead.
"That was not me! Methinks some Zionists are up to mischief," he wrote.
"There is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Bunglawala to the threat, but there is no way for me to verify this for certain. Only a Reuters network administrator would have access to the necessary records," Johnson said.
Green Helmet Fauxtography
Newsweek retracts Quran story U.S. military says it must reach out to Afghans to ease tension Monday, May 16, 2005 Posted: 11:49 PM EDT (0349 GMT) (CNN) -- Newsweek magazine issued a retraction Monday of a May 9 report on the alleged desecration of the Quran at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The report -- which said American interrogators put copies of the Quran on toilets or in one case, flushed one down a toilet -- was blamed for anti-American riots in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world last week.
"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said in a statement issued Monday afternoon.
Newsweek published the item in its May 9 issue. In the May 23 issue, it reported that its senior government source had backed away from his initial story, and Whitaker wrote that "we regret" that any part of the story was wrong. (Full story)
But the magazine did not completely disavow the story until Monday's statement from Whitaker. That followed remarks earlier in the day from Bush administration officials who called for a full retraction.
In an interview on the PBS "Newshour" Monday night, Whitaker said the problem stemmed from "one detail."
"There were other elements in this story that people are not concerned about," he told PBS. "This is the one detail everyone is concerned about, and we are prepared to retract that."
Senior White House officials applauded Newsweek's decision to retract the story but said the magazine will have to do more to repair the damage done.
"It's a good first step," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
McClellan said the magazine now has a responsibility to spread the word to the Muslim world that U.S. interrogators "treat the Quran with great care and respect."
Another official said it will take a sustained effort by Newsweek to "mitigate the fallout," also calling on the magazine to take steps to spread the word about its retraction to Muslims worldwide.
CNN confirmed at least four deaths last week stemming from riots in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Newsweek reported rioting in Afghanistan and "throughout much of the Muslim world" last week had "cost at least 15 lives."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the flap was a reminder that people "need to be very careful about what they say."
"People are dead, and that's unfortunate," Rumsfeld told reporters. "People need to be very careful about what they say just as people need to be careful about what they do." Editor: 'Many elements' in riots
Whitaker disputed the notion the Newsweek report was the sole cause of the rioting that rocked eastern Afghanistan last week.
He said "many elements" contributed and noted that Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week the U.S. commander in Afghanistan put more emphasis on local politics than anti-American sentiment stirred by the magazine report.
"On the other hand, clearly, our report played a role -- and for that we feel terrible," Whitaker said.
He said everyone at Newsweek "behaved professionally" in producing the report, and that the magazine went to the "extraordinary length" of showing the story to a Pentagon official for a response before publication.
"That official challenged other aspects of the story, but not the Quran detail," Whitaker said. He said no U.S. officials complained about the accuracy of the report for 11 days, until after the Afghan riots broke out.
The Pentagon said last week it was unable to corroborate any case in which interrogators at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay defiled the Muslim holy book.
"We can't find anything to substantiate the allegations that appeared in Newsweek," Myers told reporters Monday afternoon.
After a review of more than 25,000 documents, Myers said, investigators found only one incident recorded in the prison logs involving a Quran.
In that case, Myers said, a prisoner used pages from a Quran in an attempt to block a toilet as a protest. Even that incident was unconfirmed, he said.
"People have said, 'My goodness, why does it take so long for someone to come back with and have the actual facts?' " Rumsfeld said. "Well, it takes a long time to be truthful."
The original Newsweek article cited "sources" as saying that interrogators, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Quran down a toilet."
But Newsweek said only a single source was used and that after the original article was published, the government source said he wasn't sure what he'd read about the desecration.
Whitaker told PBS the source was known to be credible and "in a position to know the things he was telling us."
Newsweek's article was not the first time allegations of Quran desecration at Guantanamo have surfaced, but others have come directly from detainees. Diplomatic efforts
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher chided the magazine before Monday's retraction, saying "one would expect more than the kind of correction we've seen so far."
U.S. diplomats overseas were working the phones to try to spread the word about Newsweek's latest story, he said.
"We'll deal with it the same way we have been dealing with it -- by being transparent, up front and open about our policies and what our soldiers do," Boucher said.
State Department officials said it would be hard to undo the damage because of the already existing sense of anger and mistrust of the United States.
"People will believe the worst, even if it is wrong," one official said.
Afghan government spokesman Jawed Ludin said his government expresses "in the strongest terms our disapproval of Newsweek's approach to reporting which allowed them to run this story without proper examination beforehand." Reviewing tactics
The U.S. military said Monday it must reach out to angry Afghans to ease tensions.
"We want to redouble our efforts to communicate with the Afghan people," said Army Col. Gary Cheek in Kabul. "We want to ensure there is trust and confidence in the U.S."
Cheek promised to re-evaluate U.S. military tactics being used in Afghanistan that have drawn criticism from Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai.
"We continually review our tactics and certainly as the sovereignty of the Afghan government grows they will want more control, and that is correct and proper," Cheek said.
U.S. troops have been criticized for breaking into homes unannounced and for taking people into custody, sometimes on faulty intelligence.
"It does us no good to detain someone and make 100 enemies," Cheek said. "We want to be very balanced in our operations. You can't do that through heavy-handed tactics."
Cheek also said the United States wants to engage Afghan religious leaders "to make sure they understand our true values."
CNN's Dana Bash, Ed Henry and Barbara Starr and journalist Nick Meo contributed to this report.
Reuters, CNN, Newsweek.
Can I find a MSM article that says "WE SUPPORT BEHEADINGS"?
Not too likely.
But a distortion followed by a deception followed by an omission, followed by an inaccuracy, followed by something completely fase eventually adds up to supporting those who are doing the beheading.
You blasted Earthdweller for not posting what you asked for, but it took ten times longer to format these for ease of viewing than it did to find them. Had you bothered looking you could have found ten times as many as I posted here in the time it took me to post this.
I didn't even start looking for the French riots, where they carefully avoid mentioning that muslim youths are the ones burning cars (and the people in them alive), or the Abu Ghraib media blitz.
A question for you:
How many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq?
I bet you can get the answer within 100 soldiers easily.
How many insurgents have been killed?
How many were from countries other than Iraq?
I don't think you can get within 1000. Why?
Does the MSM support those that perform beheadings?
Your d@mn well f#cking right they do. But they will not spell it out for you.
One final analogy. On "Meet the Press", Tim Russert was talking with pundits on the potential for democrats to win the House and/or the Senate. There were only about seven close Senate races. Whenever the democrat was ahead by 4-10 points, he would say the democrat had a "huge lead". Whenever the Republican was ahead, he would say it was a "tight race". No he never said, "I'm Tim Russert and I want to do every thing I can to ensure that the democrats win the 2006 election." But if you choose to watch, you can kind of get the gist of it.