Hezbollawood

Great Debates
#1

Hezbollawood

At least one Reuters photographer, Adnan Hajj, has been taken red handed photoshopping his images for effect. Though he himself says it was really just because he had some lousy light conditions and I’m really Marilyn Monroe. Reuters withdraws all photos by freelancer. Of course it says a ton about Reuter negligence and incompetence, that a bunch of unprofessional bloggers in their spare time, have been able to run circles around this gigantic media cooperation. But perhaps its merely a predictable result of Reuters having outsourced much of their quality control to low-paid young workers in Bangladore? Neither it is the first time big media has used obvious false and misleading photos: Tuvia Grossman

Also there has been talk about a number of other incidents having been staged by Hezbollah. Like the Israeli attack on Qana, which has a number of suspicion looking repeat actors – and at least one Lebanese newspaper says were deliberately orchestrated by Hezbollah from start to end.

What about this series? Curiously undamaged but remarkable cute stuffed animals in strategic places

  1. Mickey Mouse - Ben Curtis, AP
  2. Minie Mouse - Sharif Karim, Reuters
  3. Stuffed animal - Sharif Karim, Reuters
  4. Stuffed animal - Sharif Karim, Reuters
  5. Issam Kobeisi, Reuters
  6. and more stuffed animals - Mohamed Azakir, Reuters

I’ve seen some more like them floating around. You could believe in one perhaps, even two or three. But is there actually anyone who believes such a torrent of stuffed animals are not placed by the photographers there for emotional response.

BBC news has women lose property…and again
(have to copy paste urls)

  1. A woman wails after having her Beirut apartment destroyed by Israeli bombs on July 22: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4399/1929/1600/beirutwoman1.jpg
  2. And now again her Beirut house as well – August 5: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4399/1929/1600/beirutwoman2.jpg

One heck of an unlucky woman.

** Lazarus?**

It’s not like it’s the first time this has been attempted. Pallywood did something like this in the “Jenin Genocide” that turned out to not be.

I’m sure there’s plenty more examples of manipulated photos and suspect setups.

Thank Bob for bloggers doing the quality work that Reuters itself should have done, though I’m sure they hate their guts for it. Personally I see it as a victory for the little man and for democracy. Power to the people. What the Internet does best.

Is Hezbollah waging a successful media war and why are western media institutions buying into it?

#2

This set of links had no evidence of the origin of these photos of how (or if) were used, and by which media, so are pretty much irrelevant.

Links are broken so I can’t comment

Actually that is a perfectly accurate photo (there is nothing unusual about bodies being contourted into unnatural postures). There is a link on that page which shows that is in fact a dead guy:
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2006/08/06/post-on-washington-post-removed/print/

#3

Does it? It sounds like they’re improving their policies, but on some level organizations have to trust the people working for them.

This would appear to be their mistake, and they should correct it.

#4

Well, looking at the linked photos, I’d say the one by Ban Curtis is maybe posed, maybe not; the three by Karim almost certainly posed; the one by Kobeisi probably posed, and the one by Azakir probably not.

Now, I know nothing about the photographers at all, but it would be useful to know whether they were actually assigned by Reuters, part-time stringers, or freelancers, as this would have some bearing on what the motives of the photographers to pose these photos might have been.

Also, why did you not simply post a link to the blog page the photos are displayed on?

Couldn’t get the links to work.

There is no particular evidence that the sitting figure is not in fact a body. Assuming, as the OP apparently does, that this is some sort of propaganda stunt, why would the photographer, who certainly would have seen the mistake, not have made several shots to ensure a choice of images to eventually send on to the wire service?

I’m not really clear on what the debate is here. If the debate is whether or not photographers, especially freelancers who are likely to live somewhat hand-to-mouth, sometimes pose journalistic photos for political or commercial gain, well, you won’t get any argument out of me. If the debate is whether all this somehow shows that right-wings blogs such as Little Green Footballs, which apparently originated some of this stuff, constitute reliable source of truthful information, forget it; I’m not buyin’.

If the debate is whether or not Reuters’ editors need to examine their output a little more closely before moving it out on the wire, I can get behind that. If the debate is whether Reuters, as an organization, has some vested interest in supporting Hezbollah, that’s utterly absurd, unless someone can show a clear, sensible or logical reason why this might be so.

Oh yeah, and where the heck is “Bangladore”?

#5

Here you go.

#6

A city in India, according to Google.

#7

I’m no photo-shop expert, but people tell me a trained users should have been able to spot those photo manipulations with half and eye, and well when a couple of bloggers could then Reuters ought to as well. Perhaps the first example of a doctored photo could have been excused - everybody makes mistakes. But by all reason, the second scam should never have been found out by a bunch of amateur bloggers before Reuters themselves.

And here’s another by Sharif Karim to add to his large collection of curiously preserved symbols of innocence left over after Israeli bombing raids:
A mannequin adorned with a wedding dress stands near the site of an Israeli air raid in Qana July 31, 2006, where more than 54 women and children were killed a day earlier. REUTERS/Sharif Karim (LEBANON) – yeah right.

For faster access. Though you have to, copy and paste some of the links for them to work. Most of them have now be collected here:
Reuters Commits Four Types of Fraud

On their own? Of course not. But they do seem to provide a much needed service of double checking the more established news outlets. Ironic in a way, considering how the press see itself as the guardian of democracy. But who’ll guard the guards? I guess we know now.

Globalisation and the wish to enter into some new markets where perhaps the journalistic requirements for neutral reporting is less stringent and they would have nothing to sell if they didn’t have such emotional (but obviously) staged photographs, may have led them to lower their quality processes and accept photos they would not accept if they were operating solely in Britain or the USA. And we are talking about the company which goes to ridiculous length not to appear to take a pro-west stand, as when they insist on calling bin laden a “dissident” and refer to the holocaust with the words: “Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Regarding this widely-accepted view” (what about the widely-accepted non-flat theory of the Earth that most physics claim is correct?) What I don’t understand is that it doesn’t seem to worry them that they’re undermining their own credibility in large segments of the rest of the world at the same time. But I see it mostly as a result of lowered quality control following a strategy of an extremely short-sighted cost saving outsourcing to a young and untrained, but very inexpensive, staff in India. You get what you pay for, and when you don’t pay for it you don’t get it. And it should come to a surprise to no-one, least of all Reuters, that Hezbollah is trying to control and manipulate the information that comes from Lebanon.

Bangalore: Media: Reuters outsourcing journalism

#8

Don’t forget that Moira Whittle, Hajj’s boss at Reuters, also works for Al-Jazeera.
And there’s this:

"In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when people around the world expressed solidarity with the United States by flying American flags, Tom Glocer, the first American CEO of Reuters and a New Yorker himself, ordered his New York staff to remove the digital American flag they had displayed on the outside wall of the company’s Times Square office. The reason? It violated Reuters editorial principles of impartiality. Reuters, its editors claimed, was not an extension of any country.

While this infuriated many as an absurdly overzealous interpretation of “neutrality,” what came next was even more disturbing. Reuters decided, in effect, to sacrifice accuracy for what it deemed to be objectivity. In a now-infamous internal memo, the news service’s global head of news, Stephen Jukes, affirmed a complete ban on using the word “terrorist” to describe the perpetrators of one of the worst acts of international terrorism: “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word ‘terrorist.’”

Reuters’s much-touted commitment to accuracy and neutrality, however, is anything but that. It has become evermore apparent that the company is not impartial at all, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".
Some more reads:
UPDATED: September 27, 2004–Reuters: News Agency or PR Firm for Terrorists? | CAMERA
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1544964,00.html?gusrc=rss
BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Western reporters 'threatened with jail'
From the Chicago Tribune about manipulating History:

How can people make honest judgments about events–whether the war on terror, the war in Iraq or Israel’s response to Hezbollah–if they can’t rely on news from the front?

Equally troubling is that these images have the power to sway public opinion and to alter the course of history. After pictures of the Qana children were flashed around the world, for instance, public outrage was directed at Israel, prompting Israeli officials to declare a 48-hour cease-fire. The emotional power of imagery can’t be underestimated, nor can its manipulative power be ignored.

In yet another series of photographs being closely reviewed for staging, British blogger Dr. Richard North of EU Referendum (eureferendum.blogspot.com) has raised questions about Qana based on photos and frames captured from video.

more:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0608090045aug09,1,1178315.column?coll=chi-news-hed
Reuters is an international press agency.
It’s been used all over the world.
Here, in Holland, both our TV news stations uses it and most of our newspapers.

I’m not going to believe another word - or photo - from a company that supports terrorists and finances Iraqi freelancers.

I prefer my news straight, without lies.

#9

And here from Qana: Green Helmet acting as cynical movie director in qana

That the child is dead is bad enough. But the way this red-cross worker / movie director uses it as a propaganda tool is heaping insult on tragedy.

#10

‘REUTERSGATE’ BECOMES AN ISSUE IN REPORTING THE ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH WAR’

The media has chosen sides in the Israel-Hezbollah War, and much is ugly.

Video segments from the Israeli side are outnumbered at least 10 to one by Worldcasting’s count.

http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/newsroom/pdblog_detail/060810_reutersgate_becomes_an_issue_in_reporting_the_israel_hezbollah_war/

#11

Photshopping makes it hard to trust photgraphs, but it always has been, hasn’t it? According to a lecture on Book TV on CSpan, doctoring photographs started almost coincident with photography.

As to posing, do you really think that the newsreel shots of guys in front of bombs with “Take this Adolf” written in chalk was just a candid record of an event that was the usual practice? The famous photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima was a posed reenactment using a bigger flag so as to be more visible on the beach and for dramatic effect.

Everything in print and on TV is selected for dramatic effect from a large body of heterogeneous data.

#12

The Iwo Jima photo is *not * a "posed reenactment."It was an actual flag-raising, the second that day.

#13

Clearly, all news you don’t agree with or that makes you feel bad is staged by the librel media because they hate our freedoms.

#14

:confused:

I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be sarcastic, but damned if I know who the sarcasm is aimed at.

#15

A video showing how to do it.

#16

You have already shown the kind of journalistic integrity that would get you sacked from Reuters. If you look at the link Garfield226 posted you will see that BBC DID NOT use both photos, they only used one of the photos (and only used it as a “stock footage” of “Beriut residents” not coverage of a specific attack). Yahoo News (who are wire service not a news agency) are the only one to use both images.

I fail to see how ANY of this is part of a liberal conspiracy to bias the MSM towards one point of view. Its a clear indication of how the MSM are lazy, but anyone how doesn’t beleive that obviously doesn’t watch CNN much.

#17

I think you are playing a semantic game. A flag was raised on Mt. Surabachi. It was too small in the opinion of an officer on the scenve. A larger flag was brought up and was raised at which time a picture was taken. What is the second raising? You say it was merely a second raising with a different flag, I call that a reenactment.

#18

In the excellent book “Gettysburg: A Journey in Time” by Willaim Frassanito, the author documents how a photographer, taking pictures of civil war dead on the Gettysburg battlefield, actually dragged a body to another location to produce a more dramatic scene. The resulting picture is very famous and has been published many times. Interesting that this kind of tampering started so early in the history of photography.