Smoke Gets in Your Eyes Gate

Here's today's treeware column on Reutersgate, with some links. It pretty much says everything I wanted to say on the matter, but I have added in some commentary which didn't make it into the paper for lack of space. Note that our Catherine Farley's superb graphic renderings of how the photos were doctored are not online.

Turned out that where there was too much smoke, there was also fire.

For the past four days, ever since the virulently anti-Muslim/Arab website Little Green Footballs nailed the news agency Reuters for its doctored photo of a smouldering Beirut, the right-wing blogosphere has been crowing about how it has once again shot down the mainstream media (MSM).

This time, the direct hit was on Lebanese freelancer Adnan Hajj, who has been shooting for the British agency since 1993.

What the guy did is moronic. Not only did he clumsily manipulate one photo to increase billowing black smoke where there was plenty to begin with (plus he cloned buildings), he did it when there were many scenes of actual - and worse - devastation available.

In doing so, he compromised Reuters - already derided by the right as "al-Reuters" for its reluctance to use the word "terrorist" - and, by extension, all photojournalists risking their lives in war zones. At the same time, he has given more ammunition to the right-wing flogosphere to complain of media bias, and to shift the story away from the carnage in Lebanon to debates over Photoshopped images and staged pictures.

Worse, this all but ensures that any and all images of civilian casualties or the blasting of infrastructure will be called into question - while the actual deaths and destruction won't.

The smoke picture, transmitted Friday and picked up by media around the world (but not the Star), was uncovered Saturday by a tip to Little Green Footballs overlord Charles Johnson, the blogger credited with bringing down CBS' Dan Rather over his 2004 report on U.S. President George W. Bush's service record - or lack of it - during the Vietnam War.

Note that somehow Johnson is now getting all the credit for this, although I don't think he deserves it. This analysis explains why. Anyway ...

From there, it spread through the right-wing blogosphere that animated it, analyzed it, dissected it and tore it apart.

Feeling the heat, Reuters issued a 'Picture Kill' later that day, warning its clients that the photo had been "improperly" edited. Then, on Sunday, Reuters announced it was terminating its relationship with Hajj.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards," the company said.

Explained spokesperson Moira Whittle: "The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under."

Except that on Monday, blogger Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report turned up a second doctored Hajj photo.

Taken Aug. 2, it shows an Israeli F-16 firing three flares as bombs are dropped on the Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh. Trouble is, the fighter jet actually fired one flare.

On Monday, Hajj was toasted, as were all 920 photos he had shot for Reuters.

(The Star has used four Hajj photos since the war began. The most recent was July 25. None of the photos used by the Star is considered suspicious by Reuters. Our website, www.thestar.com, does not carry Reuters photos.)

Now, this has become "Reutersgate." Or, as Michelle Malkin, a frequent Fox News commentator put it, "Picture Kill is a watershed moment and we won't let the MSM forget it."

Believe it.

Since Hajj's work was discredited, the right-wing blogosphere has shifted into high gear, seeking out other potential instances of photo manipulation. Many are examining images from Qana, the site of an Israeli bombing last week where at least 28 civilians were killed. Others are digging into events in Gaza, claiming images from that Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been staged or edited for the cameras. Right-wing bloggers have dubbed that "Pallywood."

Meanwhile, with very few exceptions, the left/liberal blogosphere remains silent. Not just about "Reutersgate," but also about the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

A couple of progressive writers who have addressed the photo issue have pointed out that the "angrysphere" is quick to condemn the errors of the MSM but loathe to own up to when it fakes the photos or quotes.

For the best take on that, check out Glenn Grunwald Greenwald on Salon here. He talks about, to name one example, the manipulation of an old photo of former Democratic presidential contender John Kerry which made it seem he shared a stage with Jane Fonda during anti-war rally in the Vietnam era.

But that's no defence for the Reuters screw-up, for which there is no excuse.

Any good photo editor should have spotted that fakery.

Once again, this demonstrates the increasing influence of the blogosphere whose members, in the pre-Internet days, would have had to settle for yelling at their TVs or writing letters to editors. Now they have the tools to instantly push back and make the media pay attention.

If only they showed as much compassion for the civilians who may have suffered when that bomb dropped on Beirut as they did passion when Reuters dropped its bomb on the wires.

Well, I got a lot of angry email for that kicker, much of it saying the exact same thing. I'm not objective, the Lebanese casualties are irrelevant and, best of all, where do I get the idea that Little Green Footballs is racist?

Hunh.

If you want to read a lot of the Keyboard Kommandos takes on it, commenter ''Arik,'' an LGF devotee, was obsessed with this story over the weekend and posted a whole bunch of links on this thread here. Scroll down and click away. Read how all these bloggers spend so much time proving a little smoke was added to a photo and then go nuts trying to extend it to all the media coverage coming from north of the Israel-Lebanon border.

(That said, news photos should never ever be manipulated.)

Indeed, if you want to know how I truly feel about what LFWwatch has dubbed "slightlymoresmokegate,'' read this comment on Sadly No!

They added more smoke. Simple fact. Therefore by logical extrapolation Qana was staged. Hezbollah killed those children with rat poison, then beat their small corpses into bloody messes. By further extrapolation the pics of the girls writing on the artilery shells are clearly fake as well. Photos of an ambulance with a hole blow in the dead center of the cross? Also faked, or staged.
The enemies of a peaceful Israel will stoop to any low in order to make Israel look bad. The media is slanted against Isreal, plain and simple. The photographer that modified that pic proves it. He is a Hezbollah sympathizer, and he was formally trained by the PR wing of that organization. The same PR organization that clearly has launched such a successful and powerful campaign on the internet to hijack the comments of any blogs that bring up the issue.

This one photo proves it all. Enough said.

Not quite: The rightwing flogopshere's contention that the MSM haven't reported this is CRAP. It's just that we don't sit in our basements all day and night obsessing. The blogosphere pointed this out. It got fixed. We reported on it. The end.

As if.

UPPITY DATE: Well, at least he has his own blog instead of just kommandeering my comments, unlike some people.

Comments

[Bobbi]

I know you loathe Michelle Malkin, but have you seen her post today on the NYTimes pictorial that appears to have been staged? I understand the press can't be everywhere in Lebanon instantaneously and their access is controlled by a terrorist organization, but honestly, you would think they might be a little more circumspect when it comes to choosing their pics.

[Reality Check]

Well AZ, I did go to LGF for the first time and I actually think you did go to far when you said it was virulently anti Arab and anti Muslim. It seems only to be against what the CBC would call the "militants" in that group. There is video of Palestinians celebrating 9/11, for instance. Unless you can show that this didn't occur and that this extremism doesn't exist, I don't think it should be airbrushed out of history a la Stalin. of course not all Arabs or all Muslims are terrorists, but does that mnean we can't confront those who are?

And if I read just your treeware column, I wouldn't know that Hezbollah has fired 3,333 rockets into Israel, that many Israeli civilains have been killed and others maimed, that Israeli infrastructure has also been destroyed and that Hezbollah is against the existence of a State of Israel altogether.

Clearly Hezbollah is trying to win not just the war on the ground but the PR war. To say that fighting them in the PR war equates to lack of compassion for Lebanese civilians killed does seem unfair to me.

What LGF is saying in exposing the fraudulent photo is that there is a media bias in certain quarters that is being used to assist the Hezbollah PR war. That doesn't sound incorrect to me.

I think you're characterization of Arik as obsessive is unfair also.

To cut to the chase, do you agree that Israel is a legitimate state? Or would you like to see it unwound in some fashion, like Todd? If the former, how exactly would you see it behaving so as to defend itself, on the one hand, yet not kill Lebanese civilains, on the other hand?

Isn't that what all of these blog posts are really about? Those who criticize Israel really see its creation as the Original Sin and those who defend Israel continaully try to steer the discussion to that central question? Why the latter? Because if you agree that Israel is a legitimate State entitled to self defense, it isn't so easy to set out what they should be doing differently.

[Antonia Z.]

Here's the link Bobbi should have included:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005691.htm

[Reality Check]

More on whether LGF is virulently anti Arab and Msulin in this Washington Post story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080801431.html

In the words of Charles Johnson:

In Johnson's view, the news media haven't adequately sounded the alarm about threats to Western societies posed by radical Islamic groups -- something he says he seeks to redress through his politically conservative blog.

"My main take is that political correctness has kept a lot of the hard truth from being spread by the mainstream media," says Johnson, 53, a professional musician in Los Angeles who spends most of his time maintaining his blog.

"The vast, vast majority of Muslims want to get along and live a comfortable life just like everyone else," he says. "But the mainstream media shies away from showing the public the real face of Islamic extremism. They don't want to offend. And they are influenced by some strong advocacy groups that are funded by Middle Eastern countries, which are actively engaging with the mainstream media to promote a point of view."

Where is the racism in that view? Not only that, what he says sounds right to me.

The article closes with this quote:

"I'm not pretending I'm giving equal time to both sides," Johnson says. "But I do think what I'm advocating, and what I believe in, is the right side."

AZ, does this apply to you too? Or are you moderating a debate of sorts and essentially "neutral?"

[fanofzerbisiasnot]

Zerb,

You are so full of crap it is amazing. You are pathologically anti-Israel. The long and the short of your column is that no matter what Reuters and the suspect photographer did, Israel is bad so Reuters' actions don't amount to much anyway.

If Reuters had done something that altered the truth to support Israel you would be all over them and it would amount to the end of the world.

What Reuters did is just part of a pattern that allows reporters to act as a mouthpiece for Hizbullah propaganda.

[Reality Check]

Another example of the Hezbollah media war quoting Anderson Cooper from CNN who has been on both sides of the Lebanon Israel border:

"ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know, you have to be very careful. Obviously, both sides in this conflict want their stories out. Israel, you know, provides public spokespeople very readily. If you're dealing with the Israeli military, they don't want you, you know, wandering around their artillery fields like where we are now, or wandering around their positions. So they often have press people who will actually sort of help you if you need interviews and the like.

While on the Hezbollah side, it's really interesting — I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah- controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed. They are much cruder, obviously. They don't have the experience in this kind of thing. But they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their — what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drives. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them."

[Arik]

http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin080906.php3

quote

Watch now for braying, rationalizing, and messenger-shooting from the journalistic elite [not to mention the non-elite]. You will hear them complain about the blood-thirsty blog mob. You will see MSM editors rally around Reuters and dismiss this debacle as a lone event. Adnan Hajj, the new international Jayson Blair/Mike Barnicle/Janet Cooke/Mary Mapes/Walter Duranty, will end up with a book contract and a job at Al Jazeera. Media veterans will hope that their professional apathy will snuff out probing questions like baking soda on a pan fire. After all, it's "old news" already.

unquote

[Jay Currie]

I liked your treeware column Antonia. It is a step in the right direction.

The point brought home by the fake smoke is that the pictures and reporting from Lebanon/Hezbollahland need to be very carefully screened for fakery, staging and other forms of manipulation. As the NYT discovered, dead can dance.

And here's why it matters. Here is a quote from David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party in England:

"“Anyone who saw those pictures of the results of the terrible bombing of Qana couldn’t, I think, come to any other conclusion than that some elements of the Israeli response were disproportionate.”

(The link is at my blog.)

The trouble is that the pictures and the death count at Qana are now entirely contested. We now know that the "press", and I use the word loosely, were penned in one tiny area (perhaps for their own safety) and a Hezbollah parade was organized by Green Helmet the Hez designated dead baby wrangler. Stretcher parties would stop on cue so the photogs - including Adnan "photoshop pro" Hajj - could snap the images which would influence the opinion of the Tory leader and millions of others.

LGF exposed part of the mess. (And being anti-Islamofascist is not the same as being anti-Muslim as you well know). The sites cited on the thread you closed were ahead of LGF in exposing the staging and the fraud at Qana and elsewhere. But, because of Rathergate, LGF had the profile to break the story.

But that is just the beginning. Photos can be checked; what about written news stories and interviews?

At a minimum, as you mentioned in your earlier column on media manipulation, there should be full disclosure on the part of the journalist as to what, if any, minders or manipulators were present. As well, editors at the probverbial home office should provide a disclaimer for any story or photograph where they are unable to verify that what is being written or photographed is free from manipulation.

Which would, I'm afraid mean that every story and every picture from this conflict would have to carry a disclaimer. But that is the reality and it should be front and center.

People make judgements based on what they are lead to believe is correct information. Perhaps David Cameron should know better, but the vast majority of people seeing a Hezbollah mortician holding up a dead baby will come to the conclusion that a) the baby was killed by the Israelis (which has not been established), b) that the image was caught in the course of a rescue attempt rather than a "parade", c)that the person holding up the baby is a legitimate rescue worker rather than a Hezbollah dead baby wrangler, d) that the photographer was operating independently. Some or all of these conclusions may be false and it is incumbant upon the MSM to disclose that fact when running these highly provocative shots.

[wsam]

Militaries have sought to use the media since at least the Crimean War. That is the world we inhabit. But, does anyone really believe Hezbollah has a savvier PR operation than Israel? The wing-nuts in this country and in the US act as if Hezbollah’s efforts at PR are beyond contempt while acting as if Israel, the US or even Canada would never do such a thing as try and spin the news to our favour. The lack of self-awareness goes beyond parody and touches on the pathological.

The wing-nut mouth-breathing fringe appears to believe that trying to use the media to your advantage is – rather then being an unfortunate after-effect of media-saturated 21st Century life – actually some nefarious plot sponsored by a dark and powerful pro-Hezbollah cabal whose noodley influence extends everywhere.

Because Hezbollah arranged for photographers to take pictures of some ambulances we cannot trust anything in the mainstream media. Hezbollah is being attacked for arranging a photo op. Good work guys. Is there nothing else to attack Hezbollah for? I don’t remember Canadian right-o bloggers criticising Prime Minister Harper and his handlers when they arranged to have photos taken of the PM in Afghanistan, or out walking with George W Bush and Vicente Fox on the Mayan Pyramids, or with his wife in a World War One cemetery.

If Madame Harper was married to a Liberal Prime Minister, Stephen Taylor and the bigoted conspiracy theorists at the Stupid-gun and Small Dead Ideas would have been launching spittle flecked triads calling her tears fake at their computer screens for weeks. They would have demanded an immediate tear analysis be conducted by the RCMP and DNA samples be provided for the blight-wing blogsphere to authenticate.

Israeli arranges for reporters to meet victims of Hezbollah rocket attacks. Israelis about to speak to the press are coached on what to say. The Israeli government does this because it is in their interest to do so, getting a sympathetic hearing for their message advances their cause. They would be stupid not to. Hezbollah does the same thing.

The right wing blogsphere has to be the least objective source available. Seeking their opinion is akin to asking the late Kenneth Lay for advice on what stocks to buy for retirement. For them to criticise anyone is like the Pot throwing rocks at the Kettle’s solarium from inside its greenhouse.

[Arik]

As noted by a wing-nut mouth-breathing fringe Guardian media columnist: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeff_jarvis/2006/08/making_war_look_worse.html

quote

If the effort is not to make war look worse but to make one side in it look disproporationate, then I suppose it makes sense to make the smoke bigger and blacker. It makes sense if that is your agenda.

It doesn't make sense if what you're trying to do is report the news.

unquote

[Todd]

You called, RC?

"Or would you like to see it unwound in some fashion, like Todd?"

"Unwound"?

Wow.

What does that mean?

I unwind by reading; does that mean the Israelis should do some more of that?

[Jay Currie]

Thanks for the link Antonia...the gerbil in my server is running at warp speed.

[CJ]

I heard about this doctored photo on CNN, why is a doctored photo so news worthy? They said they doctored 600 photos. I believe the whole story is publicied to support a right wing agenda of don't trust the Lebonnese.

[balbulican]

The lefties weren't entirely silent, Zerb.
http://www.stageleft.info/2006/08/09/ethics-and-photojournalism/

[Arik]

Why exactly is reaction to the media's one-sided complicity in Hezbollah's propaganda campaign characterized as "left" vs. "right"? Doesn't the scandal encompass issues of media ethics, credibility, functioning editorial controls, and the consequences for the MSM of facilitating propaganda? Shouldn't people from across the political spectrum expect those issues to be deliberated and resolved post haste? If not, why not? Why the deafening silence from one side of the spectrum concerning these matters?

[Arik]

Conclusive proof from German TV video recording the staging of photographs at Qana for propaganda purposes http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22029_Directed_By_Green_Helmet_Guy&only

quote

They actually take a body out of the ambulance, transfer it to the type of stretcher that is used in the rescue operation, and arrange it for photographs.

unquote

Additional comment here http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/10/hezbollywood/

quote

This is post-modern warfare. The story created is that Israel is committing war crime after war crime, while the reality is that it’s defending itself from an organization run by Iran that is itself a war crime. We’ve seen it over and over in the month since Hezbollah attacked Israel on July 12, in the inflated casualty figures from Qana and other strikes, the pictures of dead children paraded for the cameras, the garbage dump dressed up as a downed Israeli jet, from the mouth of Lebanon’s PM calling Israel’s troops war criminals while ignoring Hezbollah’s targeting Israeli civilians every single day with thousands of rockets. And through it all, the MSM usually plays along, giving us faked and staged photography, aping the Hezbollah line and hewing to Hezbollah’s command not to photograph any Hezbollah fighters or their rocket launch positions.

unquote

EUReferendum demonstrates Red Cross complicity in photo staging:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/lights-camera-action.html

quote

All of this, of course, is a million miles from the image that the Red Cross itself presents – the above, for instance, on the British Red Cross website as it appeals for funds for the Middle East. But one wonders whether the potential donors would be quite so generous if they realised that in the past (and possibly in the future) money given to the Red Cross was used, in effect, to create Hezbolla propaganda and to gratify the commercial needs of the media and their quest for pictures of the dead.

unquote

[Arik]

quote

“It’s hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy,” said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.

Carroll said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, “I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can’t get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described.”

unquote

[Scotian]

Posted by: wsam August 09, 2006 at 05:52 PM

What he said.

[Arik]

Eureferendum offers some excellent thoughts on MSM approaches to war coverage.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/horrors-of-war.html

quote

At the root of the most egregious failures, I believe, are three fundamental flaws – all to do with the basic mindset of the journalists involved. The first, it seems to me, stems from the way history has been taught in schools for some decades, where the focus on past wars is presented in terms of the horrors and suffering, with very little factual information as to why and how they were fought.

To a very great extent, therefore, children finish their education imbued with the idea that "war is bad" – violence is bad, without in any way understanding the historical contexts in which wars have been fought, or realising that, bad though it most certainly is, there are worse things than war.

Secondly, within modern journalism, there is a current vogue to couch "stories" in terms of "human interest", which means that nothing is news until a human face can be found on which to base any account. ***A simple, factual account of events is not longer acceptable – there must always be a human dimension.***

...

Thirdly, now coming through the system, we have a generation of journalists who have never seen military service and have thus no experience, from the sharp end, of warfare, nor of military affairs from the inside. This tends to be combined with an anti-militaristic viewpoint, carried over from their education, which means that your average hack is usually ignorant about the conduct of warfare.

...

And, being unable to understand what is going on, they prefer to stick with what they know - burbling about the "horrors of war". And, in the current operations in southern Lebanon, ***where it is in Hezbolla's interests to emphasise precisely that point,*** they find in the western media, people who are admirably conditioned to serve them.

unquote

[Arik]

A very revealing description of how Associated Press Television News (APTN) functions, by one of its former employees.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22055_LGF_Exclusive-_How_Much_Does_It_Cost_to_Buy_Global_TV_News&only

quote

Without question APTN’s interesting business model represents a concrete example of an ongoing financial “contribution” to an important communication agency promoting a pro-Arab bias.

unquote

[Antonia Z.]

Arik, why don't you get your own blog where you can talk to yourself as much as you like?

[stephen.reeves]

more on the current hypocrisy.
http://www.signandsight.com/features/894.html

"The outrage of so many outraged people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in Baghdad, killing 50 people or more, are checked off in reports under the heading of miscellaneous, while the bomb that took 28 lives in Qana is denounced as a crime against humanity. Only a few intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Lévy or Magdi Allam, chief editor of the Corriere della Sera, find this surprising. Why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200-times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don't count - whether in the eyes of Muslim authorities or viewed through the bad conscience of the west? This conclusion has its weak spots, because if the Russian Army - Christian, and blessed by their popes - razes the capital of Chechnian Muslims (Grosny, with 400,000 residents) killing tens of thousands of children in the process, this doesn't count either. The Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that we may conclude that the world is appalled only when a Muslim is killed by Israelis."
and so on an on.

[Arik]

Arik, why don't you get your own blog where you can talk to yourself as much as you like?

Posted by: Antonia Z. | August 11, 2006 at 03:56 PM

An authentic professional media commentator with an honest interest in the ethical and journalistic issues raised by the Fauxtography scandal would welcome the opportunity to address them.

Why do *you* insist on ignoring them?

[Arik]

Photojournalist Bryan Denton, on site in Lebanon, reveals disturbing details of media complicity in photo-staging http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22071_Photographer_Alleges_Unearthing_of_Bodies&only including

quote

one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms.

...

i have been covering beirut, and it was at numerous protest, evacuations as well as the israeli strikes in chiyeh, which unfortunately did not get that much coverage in the media—where i saw this behavior occur. i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that **this was not an isolated incident.**

unquote

[Bill-Muskoka]

Arik,

No doubt those things happen, and for a simple reason. The photogs are trying to record history, and with so many people working around the area of focus it does become necessary to 'manage', where possible, the shots. Thnings happen very fast in rescue operations. Often a pic records evidence that would otherwise have been lost as well!

If they were bringing in bodies to stage an event that is not excusable, but trying to get impacting shots that convey the reality does at times. Photogs do not generally get wordage, they only have a picture to say what reality was at that moment in time!