Free Republic

NEW YORK — As the midterm elections approach, voters say they are much more likely to support a challenger over the incumbent candidate, according to a new FOX News Poll. In addition, "throw the bums out" is a popular choice when voters pick bumper sticker wording to describe the main reason for their vote for Congress this year. President Bush’s job rating is unchanged this month holding steady at 36 percent approval... If the election were held today, 48 percent of Americans say they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their congressional district and 30 percent for the Republican...

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...

-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Warning Graphic Content Germany`s NDR presents unpublished video footage from the qana events, demasking "Green Helmet" as a cynical movie director, staging photographs with a liitle boys body.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

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...

Let's hope Joe Lieberman's Hail Mary toss on Iraq isn't the wave of the future for the Democratic Party. In their story on Lieberman's desperate, clammy, last-ditch attempt to save his political hide, Times reporters Patrick Healy and Jennifer Medina called Lieberman's verbal retrenchment on Iraq -- a mea culpa without the culpa -- "a new set of talking points for Democratic leaders who are struggling for the right words to reconcile their support for the war initially and the fiery antiwar stance of many Democratic voters today." Talking points? More like a recipe for disaster. Read John Zogby's terrific...

Reuters reported that 40 people were killed in a Lebanese village by Israeli air strikes. Less than three hours later, the Associated Press reported that the number of casualties had been dropped to one.

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

The interesting thing about the scandal surrounding the use of fake photoshopped pictures from the fighting in Lebanon is that it is BIG NEWS everywhere EXCEPT in the Lamestream Media where there is barely a mention of it. On the Web, TECHNORATI shows "Reuters" as the #1 search item, "Lebanon" as #2, and Reuters fake photo photographer, "Adnan Hajj" at #3. So why the disconnect? One might as well ask why newspaper circulation is plummeting or why Network News viewership is steadily declining. In fact, this fake photo story probably wouldn't have even become big news had it not...

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work. "There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Szlukovenyi said in a statement. "Reuters...

Fox News just reported that Reuters admits second photo was doctored. Here's the image:

Another photo by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj has been shown to be doctored. The photo, which proports to be of an Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational. Here is the original Reuters photo along with its caption.

A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

Mortician Source Of Qana Death Toll Figures How many coincedences [sic] can one story have before the liberal media realizes what dupes they are? Bishop Hill has noted two sources where the same green helmetted man, who is seen parading dead children’s bodies around Qana and who is probably the ‘mortician’ from Tyre who has a refigerated truck constantly full of dead bodies, is the source of those inflated death toll numbers. Hill points to this article where a journalist was denying any direct responsibility in the Qana Theatre: As far as Qana, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what...

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...

Memo to the Globe: from now on, stick to stories you know something, or at least care, about. Like gay marriage. Now the boring broadsheet has run what appears to be another very badly reported fake news story. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Is Dan Rather available for damage control? I can hear him now: “This story is true!” Disgraced CBS News producer Mary Mapes could not be reached for comment. Jayson Blair did not return repeated phone calls. Memo to the Globe: This newspaper is no longer your competition. You are now going head-to-head with The...

John Leo Wed Jul 26, 12:14 PM ET Washinton Post reporter Anthony Shadid is at it again. Shadid is the world's foremost practitioner of "They Killed My Baby!" journalism. His technique is to appear at a war scene after a bombing and conduct an emotionally loaded interview with someone who has just lost a child or a spouse. The despair of the grieving civilian comes to represent the amazing brutality of war, almost always the brutality of Israel or the United States. The Post headline writers cooperate by placing an over-the-top headline on his piece, which therefore takes on the...