Posted on 08/12/2006 8:59:51 AM PDT by pissant
THE controversy this week over Reuters' distribution of digitally manipulated, falsely labeled and — probably — staged photos of the fighting in Lebanon hasn't been nearly as large as it should have been.
Credit for bringing the sordid business to light goes to Charles Johnson, a musician and Los Angeles-based blogger, who operates a hard-edged right wing website unfathomably called Little Green Footballs. Last Saturday, Reuters, which is headquartered in London, transmitted two photographs by one of its regular Lebanese freelance photographers, Adnan Hajj, whose work for the agency has appeared in many American newspapers since 1993. An anonymous tipster reportedly drew Johnson's attention to the photos, and he immediately recognized that one purporting to show the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut had been digitally enhanced. It subsequently emerged that another image allegedly showing an Israeli fighter launching multiple air-to-ground missiles also had been altered using the common Photoshop computer program.
Johnson quickly posted a denunciation of the phony photo. Within 18 hours, Reuters killed the manipulated images, fired Hajj and removed 920 of his photos from its digital archives. Paul Holmes, the Reuters editor responsible for standards and ethics, told the New York Times that all the withdrawn images were being reviewed "to see if any others have been improperly altered." He also said the news agency was investigating how the photos slipped by its editors but noted that on the day in question, "we published 2,000 photos. It was handled by someone on a very busy day at a more junior level than we would wish for in ideal circumstances."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
But at least ONE person at the LA Times is honest. That in itself is a huge suprise.
As long as we keep exposing the Liberal MSM, the more readship and viewership stops sucking up their propaganda. Hopefully, they will all be in the unemployment lines where all good Liberals should be.
At least the guy writing in the entertainment pages has. The editorial board is a pack of committed leftists.
MARK
FYI
As apposed to the images that are properly altered???
**
Good one!
Saturday edition.
I could not believe my eyes reading this as this writer's closing statement:
"That brings us to the most troubling of the possible explanations for these fraudulent photos, which is that some of the photojournalists involved are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the Hezbollah terrorists. It's a possibility fraught with harsh implications, but it needs to be examined thoroughly and openly.
Johnson and his colleagues have done the serious news media a service. Failure to follow up on it would be worse than churlish; it would be irresponsible. "
So maybe they are realizing, just a bit, that their credibility at the LA Times is in need of severe repairs.
On line only, most likely too.
His last paragraphs tell me that at least this writer gets it, to some degree.
Interesting that the author of this piece, Tim Rutten, seems to have a reputation as an unapologetic left-wing shill...
Apparently smart enough to recognize that he doesn't want the LA Times to get taken down, because heads are going to roll be the time the phony pics and stories are fully exposed.
Yep... I have to give him credit where credit is due... Most other far-lefties in the media (for example, Derrick Z. Jackson, Robert Kuttner, David Corn, ad nauseum) are so totalitarian in their outlook that they will dig in their heels and stick to the party line no matter how strong and incontrovertable a truth is staring them in the face.
This writer for the LA Slimes should apply the same standards he seems to be for re photography to the faux news stories and editorials that appear daily in the LA Slimes to demean our Nation, Warriors, Israel and our President.
sp: incontrovertable --> incontrovertible
Mental midgets all.
That is asking WAY too much. And this little admission will not save the Slimes from bankruptcy.
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