It’s important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories.
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. —Reuters Commits Four Types of Fraud (zombietime)
Because I don’t follow the political blogs, this subject kind of crept up on me.
Warning — some of the photos on the page are disturbing, but it’s precisely the emotional impact of the photos that makes the issues of digitally altered and staged photos so important.
Note the two different shots of the same Lebanese woman lamenting the loss of her home in the immediate aftermath of attacks two weeks apart. It’s possible that someone misidentified the photo, or that an entrepreneurial freelancer misrepresented the facts to make an additional sale. But the New York Times sequence that in one picture shows a dust-free young man clutching his hat under his arm, with no visible injuries, lying in such a manner that he appears to be pinned under a small metal pole, looks very interesting when contrasted with other images from the same sequence, showing what looks like the same man wearing his cap on his head, assisting with the rescue efforts.
Then there is “The Passion of the Toys,” the dismissive title critics have given to a series of photos showing some remarkably undamaged and dust-free toys in the foreground of photos that show the aftermath of military attacks. A similiarly dramatic photo shows a mannequin wearing a wedding dress in the midst of the destruction.
The author writes, “Now, of course there is a real war going on, and there is real damage, and authentically tragic scenes. No one is denying that. So, with all the actual honest footage of unstaged war imagery floating around, why is Reuters resorting to supplementing its coverage with obviously fake photos?”
Here’s an interesting quote, credited to a comment posted on the conservative blog Little Green Footballs:
Every time, if an Israeli is hurt, it was a “rocket” that did it; if a Lebanese/Hizb is hurt, “Israel” did it. Humans hurt Lebanese, but inanimate objects hurt Israelis, according to Reuters.
I didn’t check the Reuters captions myself, but this is a good example of where bias can creep in. A similar controversy erupted in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, when photo captions from one news agency described black people as looting, while a different news agency described a different scene with subjects who are not black (it looked like a white man and a Hispanic woman) as having taking food that they found. (See “You Say ‘Looting,’ I Say ‘Finding’“
<unapproved>Ah, I see. Yes, that Little Green Footballs quote is slanted, which is why I introduced it as coming from a conservative blog. But the conservative bloggers are pointing out bias in the mainstream media, which is not supposed to favor one side over the other.
<br/>
<br/>I wouldn't have blogged this if it were simply one side of an issue complaining that they don't like the ideology of the other side is wrong; rather, the lesson to journalists is to remember how important it is to avoid even the appearance of bias, because if you don't, you open yourself up to these kinds of complaints; and if you don't address those complaints, as Dan Rather didn't when he defended CBS News's highly questionable coverage of Memogate, then your professional integrity is at risk.
<unapproved>I was referring to the Little Green Footballs quote. I can understand the argument that Zombietime makes. But that quote from LGF is simply insulting. It lumps innocent civilian Lebanese citizens with Hizbollah. And yet again it lumps all Israelis together as if there is no distinction between citizens and the state. It's just one of those things that angers me. It is a slanted bias in its own right.
<br/>
<br/>The link still doesn't work for me. Like I said, I am absolutely against Israel's (that is the state of Israel's) Zionistic extremism. It's an extremism that keeps this war going into a month. There are Ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting this ideology of Zionism:
<br/>
<br/><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060806/ids_photos_wl/r1180449285.jpg">Judaism rejects Zionism</a>
<br/>
<br/>And I am also against Hizbollah. Hizbollah has no right to mingle among civilians as the State of Israel has no right to hurt countless civillians in the name of vengeance.
<br/>
<br/>It's just an example of how everyone: conservative, liberal, independent, tells only half the picture to forward their ideologies. I swear, if you all didn't have radicals like me to… ;c)
<br/>
<br/>And the words of the Hippies echo out "give peace a chance!"
<unapproved>I agree with your point about the difference between civilians and militants, but the argument made by the "zombietime" blogger is that the news coverage is focusing on Lebanese civilian casualties more than it focuses on Israeli civilian casualties.
<br/>
<br/>The link was down when I first tried to click on it last night, but it came up again later. Maybe it will return.
The link to the article appears to not be working. I often don’t look for patterns of bias in photo captions, but that is interesting. But you must understand that there is a -huge- dichotomy between innocent Lebanese civillian casualties and Hizbollah extremists. There is also a difference between innocent Israelis and military zionists. It seems in that quote from “Little Green Footballs” that the writer lumped all of them into two seperate categories: Israel vs. Hizbollah.
I responded quickly and (I will admit) somewhat bitterly to a CR blog entry. It seems the conservative stance on this issue is becoming increasingly simplistic and rather insulting as well.
I will make it very clear as I did in my blog entry:
I do not support either extremists (Hizbollah or the Israeli government). I side with the people on both sides of the war line who are paying the real price for these extremists. I side with the people who just want to live in peace, but can’t for reasons beyond their control.
As for the photos, I will not give my opinion until I can see the methodology that the writer used to evaluate these photos (or if the author is qualified to make that call).
To me all this seems like another feeble attempt to draw our attention away from the real issue: getting a stable, peaceful world so that we don’t need to tell our children to “duck and cover.”