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IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance. Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark. But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists. It is this...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths' A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war. The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club. "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF," said Simon McGregor-Wood, Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC...

Fauxtography Defender's Faux News Turns out that Greg Mitchell, the Editor & Publisher editor who has been attacking the blogosphere like a rabid ferret for pointing out the bogus news from the Middle East, has first-hand experience with staging news. (Hat tip: Confederate Yankee.) Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts,...

All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us A jawa video spoof on Beirut Fauxtography.

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." Reuters on Sunday withdrew an image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli air strike on the suburbs of Beirut on...

The first Photoshop war Lebanon war's doctored photos could be harbinger of photojournalism crisis Gal Mor The photo of an apparently new Mickey Mouse doll, resting on a ruined street in the Lebanese town of Tyre following an Israeli Air Force attack, took me back to a British TV show called "Drop the Dead Monkey," which aired in Israel about 15 years ago. One of the journalists in Channel 4's satirical show used to hang around battle zones with a teddy bear in his trunk and place it at disaster zones a short time before cameras began shooting, in order...

Many of the mainstream media apologists have conceded – and they had little choice but to do so – that many of the photographs of the Israelis’ response to Hez b’Allah’s act of war, were staged. The evidence of staging and Photoshopping is too public. The media allowed itself to be used to defame Israel, stir up sympathy for Lebanon and halt the advance into Lebanon. But the concessions of wrongdoing stop short with digital alterations. Media spokesmen are still in denial about the biggest media fraud of all: the dramatic dead baby display at Qana. EUreferendum has not given...

When Reuters was forced to sever ties with free-lance photographer Adnan Hajj and remove more than 900 of his photos from its database earlier this month, long-whispered questions about the reliability of Arab stringers and freelancers came to the forefront. But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month. In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically...

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims. Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the...

Lebanese rescuer 'Green Helmet' injured A civil defense worker who has drawn controversy for holding up the bodies of children killed in Lebanon said Tuesday he was lightly injured fighting a weekend fire sparked by an Israeli bomb. Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre. "I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris...

Ray Robison has yet another example of staged photojournalism from Lebanon, a car with verses from the Koran strategically placed for propaganda effect: Al-AP at it again with staged photos. Ray comments: Notice this car has a wall-hanging positioned on the door. An Arabic reader tells me this board has verses from the Koran on it. Because Islam does not allow for images of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims use verses to adorn their homes the same way some Christians use paintings of Jesus. If you want to make the argument that this wall-hanging got where it is by chance, then...

Fox is now showing the German TV video of Qana showing Green Helmet Guy posing a dead child Click here to watch the Fox News video Here is the original FR post Here is the original video on YouTube: Green Helmet the movie director [Germany's NDR busts him in the act]

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography. The case also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline pressure each day, to detect digital alterations. "The Soviets had to have a whole department to doctor pictures," said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair and a former director of photography for Life magazine. "Now all it takes is a swipe of a mouse, and the kid down the...

AP Circles the Wagons Around Green Helmet Guy It’s utterly surreal. The Associated Press does a full court press, supporting the man they now call Salam Daher with a multimedia presentation packed full of distortions and outright lies: A Grueling Task in Lebanon. Watch the AP presentation here: A Grueling Task in Lebanon

Kopel: Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. If you see a news photograph of the war in Lebanon, shot from within Hezbollah territory, can you be confident the picture and caption are accurate? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Earlier this week, Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his portfolio of 920 pictures after Little Green Footballs, The Jawa Report, and many other weblogs provided evidence that Hajj had used digital editing and other techniques to fake numerous photos of the Lebanon war. On July 31, the News and Post ran the...

DAY 2 - THIS IS OUR 'TOP' POST UNTIL WE GET A RESPONSE FROM AP Page views since posting: 10,411 - First posted: 7.25 PM 10 August 2006. New post underneath this one. They hunt in packs, they film in packs and they lie in packs. And their bosses, sitting in their air-conditioned offices, thousands of miles from the action, back up their lies. And the liar-in-chief is Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor for Associated Press. Unlike Reuters' who have at least admitted their photo-fraud and started their own internal investigation, Carroll's hastily-produced "rebuttal" of the staged...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of...

ATTENTION EDITORS - CAPTION CORRECTION FOR SJS01 - 05 WHICH WERE TRANSMITTED AT APPROXIMATELY 1725 GMT ON AUGUST 9, 2006. THE CAPTION INCORRECTLY STATES THE CAUSE OF DEATH. CORRECTED VERSIONS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW THIS ADVISORY. WE ARE SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED. REUTERS. A Palestinian man carries the body of three year-old Raja Abu Shaban, in Gaza August 9, 2006. The three-year-old girl who had been reported killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Wednesday actually died of an accident, Palestinian medical workers said on Thursday. Workers at Gaza's Shifa hospital said on August 10, 2006 that the...

This is a must see for everyone, exposing some of the greatest fraud in the main stream media regarding the Israeli conflict http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

-Snip- As we said about the Reuters incident, media bias is a consensus, not a conspiracy. Consensus is what this apparent rash of unprofessional photography appears to be, which should remind U.S. policy-makers that active public diplomacy is indispensable as long as there are journalists who find war stories too good to check. -Snip-These new instances appear to be shoddy journalism, not propagandizing, and so their bias is inadvertent but nevertheless revealing. -Snip- Once the facts emerge in such cases, the full weight of the government's communications efforts should be made to ensure that the correct information is distributed broadly...

Warning Graphic Content Germany`s NDR presents unpublished video footage from the qana events, demasking "Green Helmet" as a cynical movie director, staging photographs with a liitle boys body. ... (more) Watch the video here Warning: It's graphic.

LGF: “Fauxtography” is born Slublog: Toys in all the right places Extreme Makeover Beirut Edition Allah Pundit * Lebanese pieta * Gway Pundit Ynetnews on AP photos Watch the Video

EVER since the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon started on July 12, the whole world has been watching one gruesome act of terror after the other by the Zionists almost on a daily basis. However, the biggest shock was delivered last Sunday, July 30, when Israel wrote a new chapter of indescribable savagery in what is now known as Qana carnage. On that morning the Israeli air force shelled a three-storey residential building in the Qana city in Lebanon. The aerial attack left more than 60 civilians dead, 37 of them children. While Israel is fully capable of stooping to a...

Media Bias: Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige. Over the weekend, a Reuters photographer was caught trying to make one of Israel's defensive attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon look much more devastating than it was. The photo was eventually withdrawn and the photographer ostensibly fired. The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj,...

The Passion of the Toys In Platoon, Oliver Stone said the first casualty of war is innocence. He was wrong. As the photos here show, the first casualties of war are...the symbols of innocence. And photographers from Reuters and the AP just happened upon many of these perfectly placed symbols of war's horrors. Ben Curtis, AP Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Issam Kobeisi, Reuters Mohamed Azakir, Reuters This last one is the only one that seems...untouched. Feel the pathos. Mourn for these oh-so-photogenic and suspiciously dust-free trinkets of childhood. Just don't ask any questions about their...

Michelle recaps the Hajj/Reuters affair along with great examples of the doctored and staged photos. A must see. Click here to watch the videoA must watch

More Media Manipulation The Unluckiest Beirut Woman?

LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut. The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week. Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered...

The Western media’s more than cozy relationship with Hezbollah, which has been leading throngs of pack “journalists" around like pigs on an acorn hunt, has resulted in a myth created out of whole cloth. That myth is the Israeli “massacre" at Kana, Lebanon, and it has fallen completely apart. Let’s first start with the number of casualties. At first 57 to 60 deaths – attributed to Israeli air strikes - were claimed by Hezbollah and of course the U.N., the EU and every single United States network and cable news outlet dutifully followed the party line heaping charges of war...

Chinese United Nations soldiers watch as heavy equipment is used to dig for bodies under the rubble of a home that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, in a Monday, July 31, 2006 file photo. Human Rights Watch and news organizations which initially reported that 54 or more civilians died in an Israeli airstrike July 31, 2006 in the southern Lebanese village of Qana. But a re-examination Thursday, Aug. 3, 2006, indicated there were 28 deaths. Human Rights Watch said it discovered the discrepancy as part of...

The central piece of evidence leading to this conclusion is the fact, mentioned by IDF officials from the very beginning, that the building collapsed a full seven hours after the Israel Air Force bombing. Why, then, would the residents inside not have been evacuated in the meantime? As Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force told reporters Sunday night, "It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it." Without additional evidence, Eshel merely left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists, or explosives they left behind, caused the explosion. "Indeed," writes Robert Spencer for...

It was the shot seen round the world: shocking, disturbing, heartrending and intentionally so. [Graphic content appears below and in links.] A man dressed up as a rescue worker held up a dead infant, purportedly killed in the basement of a building that supposedly collapsed after it was allegedly hit by Israeli ordnance. The AP wire story begins: "Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours - two toddler girls wearing tiny gold earrings, a small boy whose pale blue pacifier still hung from his neck [sic]. Somewhere in the middle, Jradi slumped beneath a tree and wept."...