My thoughts on the latest Reuters scandal (at least "Routers" has never used fake pics...) over at TCS Daily, and what it may mean for the future of press photography.

Since we're all interested in full disclosure here, it's worth pointing out that TCS Daily is funded by Exxon, which might help to explain its bias on global warming stories.

Full disclosure, works for everyone.

Since my post or piece has absolutely nothing to do with global warming, this is an idiotic non sequitur (to the degree that it's true). One could in fact write a piece on just how foolish this kind of "follow the money" argument is, and how devastating it would be to your cause if applied equally across the board.

So is Bill the new troll around here? The others seem to have faded after Lambert won and the UN passed a cease-fire resolution.

Bill says: ...funded by Exxon, which might help to explain its bias on global warming stories.

What bias? I have read four studies that all point to the data from the past 100 years, the most complete from the US (figure the odds) and the average mean temp of the US has not changed even a tenth of a degree. The average mean temp of the world (with much less data) shows a .6 degree increase. All that over 100 years. Where is the bias from the left's earlier disaster in the making...global cooling from the early to mid eighties?

Sorry Rand....

I just LOVE that word....FAUXTOGRAPHY.

Have to remember that for Scrabble! ;-)

Again, the claim that all of the "fauxtography" goes in one direction says more about Rand Simberg than about the "MSM". The truth is that the US Army stage-managed a lot of photos and other news in the early days of the war in Iraq, for example the famous picture of the statue of Saddam Hussein getting pulled down. Just like the photo of Beirut, they were not content even with favorable images of victory; they had to intervene to make them "better".

But certain people who readily eat the corn of the Pentagon information office do not mind it in that direction.

In my view, life is too short to hover over the shoulders of TV viewers and worry about what they see. There is always a lot of propaganda on all sides and the viewers deserve some credit for sorting it out, or some blame for not doing so.

In this case, there are plenty of war images from Lebanon that stick to the truth. Some people would just rather bash the few fabrications.

I saw the video of the statue being pulled down. I'm fairly certain that was not a photoshop job. If you mean the Army utilizes propaganda to its advantage, that's fine. But then, news organization usually point that out. For example, when the Army released the full footage of Zarqawi fumbling with a jammed M-249, even Fox News added the disclaimer that the Army released the footage to counter the jihadi video and show Zarqawi as an imcompetent jihadi.

Rand's topic is about what was already a photo of a burning building that was intentionally distorted. The distortion was obvious to laymen, and therefore should have been obvious to professionals. So the concern is, why isn't Reuters acting like a professional organization? Why can't they even handle laymen stuff?

Mike, you say:
In this case, there are plenty of war images from Lebanon that stick to the truth.

Exactly. So instead of asking "why bash the few fabrications", why not ask the question; "why publish fabricated photos?"

I saw the video of the statue being pulled down. I'm fairly certain that was not a photoshop job. If you mean the Army utilizes propaganda to its advantage, that's fine.

No, I meant that the Army pulled the statue down itself to make the scene more dramatic. The Iraqis were just not showing enough muscle on their own. Some American soldier also put an American flag over Saddam Hussein's face, and the Army decided that that looked too imperialistic, so they ordered it removed. They stage-managed that detail too.

So the concern is, why isn't Reuters acting like a professional organization?

By that standard, no organization acts "professional" on such short notice. Reuters has only a few hours to put photos like this before getting scooped by other news agencies. They don't have time to pore over everything they get from freelance photographers. So they vet the photos quickly and they are fallible.

In one respect Reuters has been far more "professional" than, for example, Fox News. Namely, they are willing to admit to error and back it up by firing the journalists who did wrong. Fox News did not fire Geraldo Rivera when he spilled classified battle plans on TV; they did not fire whoever took CNN's footage of the Columbia accident without attribution; and they did not fire John Ellis when he called Florida's election results before he knew them in 2000.

But I have to put "professional" in quotes because Fox News is really engaged in the world's oldest profession, as its competitors such as CNN and CBS increasingly are as well. I don't know that there is any standard to hold them to.

The Marines pulled down the statue. Again, I don't deny the propaganda role. At the same time, it was a real scene at a real location. Unlike Hezbollah, the Marines didn't confiscate journalist cameras, record their names with threats, and then publish their own photos; rather the US Marines the whole act in plain view of journalist to report what they wanted to report.

Mike's argument makes me wonder if he was caught forging something previously. He goes on this non-sequiter rant about Fox News not firing various people. It's like he is pissed he got caught and others didn't.

The Marines pulled down the statue. Again, I don't deny the propaganda role. At the same time, it was a real scene at a real location. Unlike Hezbollah, the Marines didn't confiscate journalist cameras, record their names with threats, and then publish their own photos; rather the US Marines the whole act in plain view of journalist to report what they wanted to report.

You're setting up a false parallel here. Adnan Hajj is not a member of Hezbollah; he is just some biased Arab journalist. He didn't confiscate anyone's camera, he just doctored his own photo. And whatever Hezbollah's habits are at other times, right now they have their hands full and a lot of journalists are there taking whatever photos they want to take.

I'm not going to suggest that Hezbollah is remotely similar to the US military -- that would be an inappropriate comparison -- but you should be careful before promising that the US military never does some bad thing X that Hezbollah does. The US military has indeed confiscated the cameras of both Western and Arabs journalists, sometimes only to spare itself political embarrassment, and sometimes while it issues many of its own photos. For example, they took David Gilkey's camera in Fallujah. See http://www.cpj.org/attacks03/mideast03/iraq.html .

Mike's argument makes me wonder if he was caught forging something previously. He goes on this non-sequiter rant about Fox News not firing various people. It's like he is pissed he got caught and others didn't.

Nope, I never got caught forging anything. I also don't mind that Adnan Hajj got caught passing a doctored photo to Reuters. Up to a point, I'm happy that the bloggers are onto Hajj. What you don't understand is that Fox News also "got caught". The difference is that they have the privilege of pretending that they did nothing wrong. Their viewership is naive enough that they can just lie their way out of their embarrassments for the duration. That is what disappoints me about the intellectual standards of certain bloggers. They think that if someone on their side gets caught and says, BFD, it's as good as doing nothing wrong.

But probably I just shouldn't be disappointed.

Mike,

We all know where you get your corn and you have demonstrated that it is of a scarified nature.

There is a key possibility missing from your article -- the possibility that the fake was a "work-in-progress" image sent in to Reuters by mistake. I quote below:

"The photographer in this case was sloppy, either because (a) he didn't know what he was doing (likely), and/or (b) didn't think that his editor would be sufficiently burdened with clue to notice (sadly, quite possible, and a reasonable guess, given the fact that it took the blogosphere to reveal it) and/or (c) thought the editor would share his agenda, and not mind that much, if (again, the cluelessness bit comes in here again) no one else would notice (sadly, this scenario is all too plausible as well)."

I submit another option d): The likelihood that the photographer accidentally sent a "work-in-progress" image, an early stage of the fakery, instead of what he intended to be a final product.

Option (a) is hard to believe in the face of his 920 total previous shots, unless we presume that this was perhaps his first time, or the one of only a few bad fakes and the first to get caught.

Option b) and c) both postulate an "Oh, the editors/readers are too stupid/credulous/like me to catch this" kind of assumption -- one that strains in the face of just how obvious the doctoring is.

Option d) explains both why the fake was so bad for an otherwise competent photographer, and doesn't need to explain why such would willfully attempt to pass off such a bad fake as genuine *under his own name*.

If I'm right, it also means that his intended and presumably superior final product probably wouldn't ever have been spotted If he *hadn't* goofed.

MJ says: You're setting up a false parallel here. Adnan Hajj is not a member of Hezbollah; he is just some biased Arab journalist. He didn't confiscate anyone's camera, he just doctored his own photo. And whatever Hezbollah's habits are at other times, right now they have their hands full and a lot of journalists are there taking whatever photos they want to take.

I didn't set up the false parallel. You did. This is a made up strawman about me comparing Adnan Hajj to Hezbollah, and I specifically wrote that the Marines are not Hezbollah. The parallel is all yours.

MJ says:but you should be careful before promising that the US military never does some bad thing X that Hezbollah does.

Leland previously said: If you mean the Army utilizes propaganda to its advantage, that's fine. But then, news organization usually point that out.

That doesn't look a promise that US military doesn't resort to propaganda. So again, you made up a strawman.

MJ says: Nope, I never got caught forging anything.

You just got caught twice forging strawmans. That's in just one comment of yours. You got caught previously making up BS on various other threads. Might I remind people of your belief that the Irish Repulican Army supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War? I say you are pretty prolific in the stuff you make up on a daily basis.