WILLisms.com: How Big Is The Reuters Photo Scandal?

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How Big Is The Reuters Photo Scandal?

When that now-infamous photo cropped up my reaction was to chuckle a bit about the horrible clone job. Yeah, I thought it was definitely newsworthy in its dishonesty but I didn't think it merited a -gate appellation as a major scandal. But as other examples of blatant and possible manipulations keep piling up as the hours go by, it is becoming clear just how widespread and deep this dishonesty goes. We are now finding out that fabricated news stories, staged events and photomanipulation are an entire frickin' industry in the Middle East:

Exhibit A: Taxonomy of Press Dishonesty

Zombie lays it all out in a brilliant breakdown -

The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are:

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?

Read the whole thing.

Exhibit B: Pallywood

This is an eye-opening little documentary about the information war being fought in another battlefront in the War on Terror in Palestine:

This is all starting to bury Rathergate in significance. This is enemy propaganda, or dishonesty that just happens to aid the enemy, that has infected Reuters (and AP and the New York Times as well) spreading out to the thousands of news outlets that rely on them. This isn't about a presidential election, this is about an information war on our doorstep manipulating the carnage of war to benefit Islamofascism.

Fortunately, the uncovering of this disinformation campaign can now be tallied as a victory for the good guys in the asymmetric War on Terror, that will hopefully close or at least improve this pernicious theater of the war.

Who says the 101st Fighting Keyboardists can't win real battles?

Thank you, Charles Johnson!

Posted by Ken McCracken · 9 August 2006 05:42 AM

Comments

I remember little green footballs had a video of john kerry at the first debate. You could tell Charlie Johnson stayed up all night watching it. eventually he decided kerry had cheat notes. Ever since the dan rather "expose" they have had hundreds of stupid things like this at that site. Menawhile, the memo probably would have been debunked the next day anyway.

Bombing apartment complexes full of civilians is a lot worse than doctoring pictures. this type of hunting for conspiracies during a war only inspires more hatred towards israel. so...by all means continue!

Posted by: lester at August 9, 2006 03:35 PM

Exposing journalistic fraud inspires more hatred towards Israel?

What prescriptions are you on, Lester?

Posted by: Ken McCracken at August 9, 2006 09:24 PM

Exposing the Palestinian's in the act of fraud will probably win the Palestinian's a Peace Prize! Ken, that's how it works. How do you think Yasser Arafat got his Prize??? I don't quite understand it? BUT, that is how it seems to be. Who decides on those Peace Prizes anyway?

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at August 10, 2006 06:01 AM

the classy thing to do would have been to acknowledge the devastation of the attack in the actual photo in some way before moving on to criticizing the doctored one. let me help you with PR

Posted by: lester at August 10, 2006 01:05 PM

Yes, please let us acknowledge how horrible it is that Hezbollah places weaponry in densely populated areas and hides among civilians.

Thus, when Israel defends itself against genocidal psychotics it is more likely that civilians are going to be harmed.

Yes Lester it is indeed horrible.

Posted by: Ken McCracken at August 10, 2006 07:34 PM

ken- when did that happen? I'm talking about the current judeo fascist terror assault on our democratic ally lebanon

Posted by: lester at August 11, 2006 11:33 AM

Don't you mean the attack by the democratic Israeli state upon the totalitarian Hezbollah terrorist militia that was supposed to be disarmed under SC resolution 1559 and the Taif Accords?

Posted by: Ken McCracken at August 11, 2006 01:03 PM

Sorry. I'm an american, I don't put much faith in UN resolutions. and I'd hardly call a country that doesn't allow residency to those who aren't part of it's poltical philosphy democratic.

and this photo scandal is approxamately 1/100 000 000 000 000 the size of ahmed chalabi and the neo cons doctoring of pre-iraq war intel

Posted by: lester at August 12, 2006 12:10 PM