Holy Photoshop Batman!
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism
Umm…yeah…
I’m not expert at Photoshop, but this is a pretty blatant attempt to make this smoke from Lebanon seem like much more. Three times more in fact. Of course, the right wing blogosphere will indict the entire Reuters organization for this mess-up and will spend days dissecting this photo. Truth is, you’d need a few people to see this before it went out on the wire, and maybe even less considering how “breaking news” these photos probably are.
Still, whoever did this should be fired. And whoever approved it should be reprimanded because, really, what an incredibly poor decision.
UPDATE: Ynet reports that Reuters has suspended the photographer, and they’ve pulled that picture in favor of the original. See below.
Reuters’ head of PR Moira Whittle said in response: “Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures.”“As soon as the allegation came to light, the photograph, filed on Saturday 5 August, was removed from the file and a replacement, showing the same scene, was sent. The explanation for the removal was the improper use of photo-editing software,” she added.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 6th, 2006 at 3:45 am
Yeah, thats pretty fake looking. Worst I’ve seen in the press since Condi’s “demon eyes”.
August 6th, 2006 at 4:24 am
The demon eyes were riDICulous…
August 6th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
More at Jawa Report.
August 6th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
An ironic reminder of a recent statement – blog stuff is opinion, not fact. Get your facts from the MSM.
August 7th, 2006 at 1:27 am
A little or more smoke makes no difference. People are still dying under it for no reason except that our leader uses now his minions to fight his wars. Lewis, get your facts straight. We do not get facts-truth- from the MSM, we get propaganda.
August 7th, 2006 at 8:43 am
[...] Holy Photoshop Batman!Donklephant - Aug 6, 2006I m not expert at Photoshop, but this is a pretty blatant attempt to make this smoke from Lebanon seem like much more. Three times more in fact. … [...]
August 7th, 2006 at 9:53 am
I’d say another big difference between bloggers and the MSM is that when a blogger repeats a falsehood or outright lies, he or she isn’t fired. They just shut off comments. Reuters fired the photographer. Reuters may or may not have an agenda, but I think any organization that uses hundreds of reporters and photographers is vulnerable to something like this. All they can do is try to maintain quality control and take steps when someone screws up. The bloggers can criticize Reuters when they start going into all of the hotspots, instead of relying on the MSM to do it for them. It always amuses me how so much content on blogs is links to MSM stories, but whenever there’s a screwup we hear the continued refrain about how you can’t trust anything the MSM says.
August 7th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
ReutersGate/2
Little Green Footballs, EU Referendum, Power Line, Protein Wisdom, Ace of Spades HQ, The Huffington Post, California Conservative, Daled Amos, Flopping Aces, Blogs for Bush, An Unsealed Room, Euphoric Reality, Captain’s Quarters…
August 7th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
“A little or more smoke makes no difference. People are still dying under it for no reason except that our leader uses now his minions to fight his wars.”
Actually, they are dying because of a 6- year attempt to annihilate the state of Israel and Israel’s attempt to stop that from happening. They are dying because Hiz’b'allah fires its missiles from apartment building roofs. Either the Israelis eat the missiles or they take out the launchers. The deaths of civilians is unavoidable and they are clearly Hiz’b'allah’s fault.
August 7th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
60 year attempt, I meant. Missed the 0
August 7th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Hey, we’re good fact checkers and this proves it. But original reporting? Not so much.
Also, Reuters has now pulled of this guy’s photos just in case they were manipulated. I think that’s an appropriate response and I applaud it.
August 8th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Whoever said: “An ironic reminder of a recent statement – blog stuff is opinion, not fact. Get your facts from the MSM” is clearly ignorant of both the blog”stuff” and the MSM.
Having worked with the MSM and actually having “READ” and “LISTENED” to the MSM daily, and more importantly actually being able to understand what is being said – the MSM not only LIES outrightly on much of what it reports as “facts” – but when it s not lying its distorting the truth by framing the stories from a biased agenda.
Any reputable news agency should NEVER be biased in its reporting. Yet every MSM organization is indeed biased, arrogant, and convinced that their shit doesn’t stink and that fools will believe that they are a source of “facts”
Blog “stuff” is not always opinion.Most news agencies have blogs from several of their key “celebrities” such as Anderson Cooper. Second, bloggers such as Mike Yon not only go to Iraq and Afghanistan on their own dime – but report the truth – good bad and ugly – to an appreciative intelligent audience – who pay out of their pockets to support his efforts. Not beholding to anyone – he speaks the truth. So much so – that MSM news organizations use HIM and his work as their source of information…and constantly interview him in order to bring some semblance of truth to their reporting.
,
August 8th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
This is absolutely reprehensable. Any photojournalist knows that doing ANYTHING to a photograph that alters context or the truth of a subject, is, in fact commiting libel. Unfortunately, if the image was cleanly touched up, nobody would have been the wiser. Images are routinely manipulated to suit the sensabilities of a media organization’s advertisers. It used to be known as crop and burn.
What a blatant and sloppy touch-up. The photo editor for Reuters should be fired. I wonder what motivated the alteration. Advertiser, editor, or the lack of confidence by Mr. Adnan Hajj. I think we all know the answer. I’m so glad that Reuters dropped him. He just destroyed any credibility his work will ever have, and forever reminds the world of yellow journalism and the muckrakers. I hope he gets stuck with a job at fotomat, or taking pictures for Walmart.
August 8th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
You’re right, it’s not always opinion. But original reporting is few and far between, agreed?
And this is not to say that the MSM doesn’t get it wrong sometimes. They do, but they often times own up to it and try to correct it. What else would you ask of them? Sometimes thing are outright lies, sure, but again…this is a self correcting system. If you don’t tell the truth, odds are you’re gonna be out on your ass fairly soon.
August 8th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
self correcting? Until a BLOGGER pointed out the altered photo, until Bloggers pointed out that the paperwork about Pres Bush with regards to his service in the Guard, used by Dan Rather was not autheniticate and proved to be false, until bloggers have pointed out the many biased “facts” that the NY Times, and The LA Times have continuously attempted to pass of as truth,..the media does very little self correcting. YOu might want to note that this is NOT the first time this altering of photos has occured at Reuters… altered to lend support to Hezbollah I might add. This had occured several times in the past three weeks alone.
The blogger who pointed out the “errors” was threatened by someone within Reuters who has since been fired.
So much for self correcting unbiased reporting!
August 8th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
This is hillarious. Now the New York Times is actively participating in the staging of photos. I can’t say this suprises me.
Does anyone doubt that exploiting civilian casualties in order to manipulate mainstream media is an important (perhaps the most important) part of Hezbollah’s military campaign? Could you then conclude that Hezbollah is deliberately trying to get civillians killed for this purpose?
Would it then follow that these photographers, and the editors that fail to scrutinize, are compatriots (either willingly or in ignorance) in Hezbollah’s campaign?