Yet another fake news photograph

I have said time and again if one must lie, they are likely in the wrong as they feel the facts are not enough to prove their point of view. We have seen the media time and again purposefully doctor news stories and photographs in order to skew things to their agenda. This time it is Reuters who has been caught red-handed doctoring a photograph. Ynet covers the story:

Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation.' Reuters' head of PR says in response, 'Reuters has suspended photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to photograph.'

Basically, the photographer manipulated the photo by taking smoke from within the photograph, copying it and pasting it in another area of the photograph to give the appearance of the smoke being worse than it really was. The first thing one wants to do is commend Reuters for taking action against the photographer. However, that would place all of the guilt on the photographer. As Ynet continues:

Johnson added: "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."

Speaking to Ynetnews, Johnson said: "This has to cast doubt not only on the photographer who did the alterations, but on Reuters' entire review process. If they could let such an obvious fake get through to publication, how many more faked or 'enhanced' photos have not been caught?"

A series of close ups are then posted on the blog, showing that "it’s not only the plumes of smoke that were 'enhanced.' There are also cloned buildings." The close ups do appear to show exact replicas of buildings appearing next to one another in the photograph.

Looking at the photograph it is plain to see that the smoke plumes are clones. How did the photo get through the editing process? There is a culpibility further in the organization than the photographer. If you use the same logic as used in Abu Graibh, you would come to the conclusion that the organization all the way to the top has an agenda that the people at lower levels felt comfortable doing this.

As for the photographer, the story does not quite end there. There is yet one more thing we need to know about him. According to Ynet:

Adnan Hajj, the photographer who sent the altered image, was also the Reuters photographer behind many of the images from Qana – which have also been the subject of suspicions for being staged.

"A photographer who would blatantly falsify an entire 'news' image would certainly not be above posing and staging photographs of rescue workers," Johnson concluded.

How interesting. What a tangled web we weave. It is beyond comprehension how these organizations continue to get away with these things and still have anybody believe a word they say. I guess there are a lot of people out there who prefer to be media dupes.