Video not so verite

This may seem like deja vu to the more regular readers among you but I did want to write it up for the main event, the Star. Today's treeware column is basically a follow to my post of August 8, in which I show how Stephen Taylor used YouTube to eviscerate CBC-TV News' Christina Lawand over her coverage of the Conservative caucus meeting in Cornwall. I'll cut to the newer stuff, since the Lawand stuff is available via the links above:

Queen's University biochemistry student Stephen Taylor, who in 2004 ran for the Conservative nomination for Kingston and the Islands, deconstructed Lawand's report for the National on his political blog.

As he argued, the packaging of the piece took Harper's words out of context, made it seem as if he did not care for the Lebanese-Canadian perspective, and closely tied him to the pro-Israel constituency.

To be honest, once you see the raw footage of what Harper actually said in response to a question by a Star reporter, it is hard to refute Taylor.

And that's the key.

Because, instead of providing a written critique of Lawand's report, he eviscerated it using YouTube.com, the video hosting service founded last year by three former PayPal employees and which has gone from zero to maybe a billion in worth since.

Some 100 million viewings of clips occur daily on YouTube.

But in the days after Taylor employed it to attack CBC, one of his favourite targets, his seven-minute Lawand video was one of "the most linked-to" clips on YouTube.

As CBC producer and web guru Tod Maffin pointed out on the public broadcaster's official blog Inside the CBC, YouTube, and similar sites such as Google Video, are "effective means for getting the message out."

Which advertisers — as well as propagandists — have already discovered.

They can pose as ordinary citizens doing their own thing with their mobile phone cams, downloaded music, graphic text generators and some archival clips to make mini-movies and send them shooting to computers all over the world.

For example, last week, one video making waves on the triple-w was a spoof of former U.S. vice president Al Gore's well-received feature documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. It depicts a bloated Gore bloviating about temperature spikes and the like, while putting even penguins to sleep.

The parody was presented as having been made by a 29-year-old geek nicknamed "Toutsmith" in a Beverly Hills basement. But, when the Wall Street Journal tried to track him down, it discovered it actually originated from the computer of a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, whose clients include oil behemoth Exxon.

"A DCI Group spokesman declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video, or to explain why Toutsmith appeared to be sending email from DCI's computers," reported the Journal.

As for Exxon, it denied any connection to the video.

As PR Watch reports:

What is certain is that "political operatives, public relations experts and ad agencies" are increasingly using video-sharing websites like YouTube to shape public opinion. Ogilvy & Mather "plans to post amateur-looking videos on Web sites to spare word-of-mouth buzz about Foster's beer," and AT&T has used YouTube to post videos against net neutrality.

You just can't get around these guys.

More Photo Follies

Now an AP photo from Beirut has come under scrutiny. It depicts a Lebanese woman, on two different days, reacting to the destruction is South Beirut.

The pictures look posed. Or perhaps the woman is a drama queen. Or Hezbollah.

Or maybe there's a simpler explanation: Maybe her house really was demolished by bombs. Maybe she keeps coming back to it. Maybe she has nowhere else to go.

After all, that isn't exactly prime real estate right now in the background.

It's right to question the photo's veracity. Its wrong to assume that, just because two different photographers on two different days shot the same woman, that it is a hoax.

This photo fakery obsession is consuming the angrysphere.

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.

Harping on CBC

Over the weekend, the Blogging Tories got into a lather over this report (YouTube video) by CBC-TV's Christina Lawand who was covering the Conservative caucus meeting in Cornwall.

They claim she took Prime Minister Stephen Harper's line about the reaction of the Lebanese and Jewish communities out of context -- and certainly, based on the video analysis, it looks that way.

Here's another take:

CBC showed a report of the anti-Harper protest that took place in Cornwall where the Conservative Party was holding a retreat. The segment by Christina Lawand shows Elsaadi Daad, a chador-clad woman who was incidentally on her way to meet Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay, saying that burning children and killing people on both sides is wrong and "it’s got to stop". Lawand then says that "Harper clearly wasn’t swayed" and showed Harper speaking the following words, "I’m not concerned or preoccupied in any way with reaction within individual communities. I think the reaction is very predictable."

The juxtaposition of the two statements, not to mention Lawand’s statement that "Harper clearly wasn’t swayed" clearly showed what the CBC wanted their viewers to see — Stephen Harper saying that he doesn’t give a damn about the killing of civilians in the Middle East and more importantly, he couldn’t care less about the "predictable reaction" of Muslims like Daad.

The only slight problem with Lawand’s report is that it just didn’t happen that way. But why let the truth get in the way of a great piece by the CBC about how bad Stephen Harper is.

The juxtaposition of some images, and not others, with the Harper's clip made it seem that he does not care about the Lebanese-Canadian community.

However, to blame Lawand is not necessarily fair since she probably did not do all her editing herself in Cornwall but, instead, the segment was packaged with archival footage back in Toronto or Ottawa.

That said, CBC should have been extra careful: This is the Prime Minister pronouncing on highly explosive and divisive issues.

More fuel for its funeral pyre.