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Reuters Admits, Pulls Doctored Photos
fragmentate points to a post on PopPhoto which says "Reuters pulled a photograph of burning buildings in Beirut yesterday after a post on the Little Green Footballs blog outed it as digitally manipulated. The photo, filed on Saturday by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, ran with the caption "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs."
Fragmentate adds "Another image from the same photographer was found to have been doctored.
Whether you're a CNN fan, or a FoxNEWS fan, you have to wonder how much of what we see is fake, or exaggerated."
From the synopsis to Max Headroom, Episode 15, "War", ca. 1987.
These days pros shoot digital. I am a pro, I shoot digital. Somehow people have this impression that only what comes "out of the camera" is "real," but a digital photo is just an A-D conversion with a given set of parameters. I can significantly change the look of a scene just by changing the settings of the camera.
More to the point, I often shoot RAW, which REQUIRES "development" in order to be shown online or printed, since as a file it's just an uncalibrated sensor dump, meaningless data, not an image at all. But the look of a RAW image can change DRASTICALLY when converted to JPG based on the choices I make when selecting things like white balance, exposure, sharpness, contrast, etc. (and these have to be manually selected--i.e. the choices must be made by me in order to get an image file out the other end, there is no "real" initial image).
The point is that the camera is only, and has always only been, a tool for realizing the vision of the photographer. It is not "objective" in any sense (and wasn't in the film days either, even film had to be "developed" and this process could vary an image quite a bit). Photoshop/GIMP/Silkypix/any other image processor is no different, and represents just an extension of the photography/development process.
If a JPEG image comes out of the camera with very low contrast, why is that the "real" scene and not an incorrect camera setting (contrast turned too low)? And if I then take a low contrast image in GIMP and adjust the contrast for better clarity, why is that a "fake" scene and not the "real" scene that I saw?
The logical extreme of such arguments is that the only "real" images in the digital age are taken with black-box cameras with all settings on "auto" and nothing adjusted afterward. Only people forget that digital cameras are just glorified A-D converters and that all of the "auto" settings are calibrated and coded by programmers who are also making decisions about how images will look (high contrast vs. low contrast, expose for shadows vs. expose for highlights, compensate for differences between human lens and camera lens or don't, etc.)
Every step of the photo process, from selecting the camera + lens in the first place all the way to selecting the compression level of the file after all else is said and done, is "editing." All photography is propaganda by the photographer and anyone that doesn't realize this is both naive and missing a great deal of the appreciable "art" involved in the process.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
These photos are the latest chapter in a long-running problem of the press... and I think it's time for the American press to finally come out and say what it is - biased. ALL press is biased, period. But only here in the U.S. do we all happily assume that, somehow, our press holds itself to its lofty goals.
Almost all of the European press is up front about its bias - left, right, or otherwise. It's liberating, it's informing, it's better for consumers. If I want to read the French press and see what's going on in the right, I read Liberation, the far-left (communist), L'Humanite, the right, Le Figaro, a center-left, Le Monde. By reading articles from each newspaper on a subject, you can hear what all sides are saying quickly and get much more information.
But here in the U.S., such a bias is reviled. Fox News, for example, is looked down on for its conservative bias. I look down on them as well - not because they have a bias, at least they're more open about it - but because they try to conform to the American press ideal of supposedly unbiased reporting by claiming they're "fair and balanced". Just come out and say it!
I don't care if the NY Times is left-leaning, either. That's fine. But they should at least ADMIT it.
Americans, journalists in particular, need to embrace their biases. Let us know where you're coming from so we CAN get the message from both sides, not some filtered down, biased report passing itself off as "both" sides of the story.
BBC is usually pretty even handed. But not, for some reason, when it comes to Israel related news. http://home.comcast.net/~jat.action/BBC_bias.htm It's surprisingly blatant, especially coming from commentators and reporters on BBC International.
Those are REALLY badly doctored photos - easy to spot. I think quite a few amateur GIMP/Photoshop users could have done a much better job (I know I can).
If such obviously doctored photos are making it past the editors - who knows what more subtly done stuff has escaped detection.
www.sjbaker.org
Some bloggers noticed a problem with the timestamps of his photographs as well. He allegedly photographed that same dead child being held up over a period of several hours by the same "rescue worker" that appears in many of the photos. The photos in all possibility appear staged. For news photographers that's a cardinal sin, or "haram" in this case. But previously Reuters denied all such allegations.
I smell bullshit. Any 14 year old with 2 months experience could have made a better job. And now you say such photo made through the editors AND another guy who, as distracted as he could be, failed to notice an obvious fake? Also, wasn't there enough smoke already? Maybe such pics are meant to spread a kind of FUD about the carnage? Or meant to make people speak about doctored photos instead of current events? Anyway, great way to end a photographer career. Very zidanish :)
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I have a friend who's a sound engineer and he says he always hears library sounds on news reports. e.g. A report from Iraq may have some standard AK47 shots dubbed on to make it sound more interesting.
You use reporters with a political agenda, shared by the editors, it should come as no surprise that this is what you get. The international press does not like Israel. They especially seem offended that the country hasn't just given up and died yet.
Oh, really? I mean, does someone from USA or Israel listen to the international opinion? I mean, the War on Oil^H^H^H^HTerror and this yet another international military conflict american style?
This is no way confined to Reuters. Here is an excerpt from yesterdays reliable sources between howard kurtz and Thomas ricks of the washington post.
Reliable sources [cnn.com]
THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me. KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here. RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.
*cough* Luisitania *cough* PearlHarbour *cough* WTC *cough*cough*, man, I have a very baad flu.
This fellow Ricks is willing to spout crap like the above on national television. The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah. Israel a country that goes to the trouble of trying to get civilians away from targets before they are hit does not.
Maybe because without the approval of USA this kind of sh*t would not happen, and the rest of the americans should get involved into it.
Are you going to be happy if Cuba launches missiles at USA because they *know* there are suspected anti-communist elements in USA? Well, if not why are you in support of such butchery of innocent civilians? You know, if the Israel army is so great-and-humane, maybe they should go for every house, and not try to destroy the whole country *including* the infrastructure. Yes, the Home-Of-The-Even-Braver indeed!!! The poor israeli are going to get in so much trouble for this war... like, you know, the thousands americans veterans of the Vietnam war. People NEVER learn anything.
That may be, but representing photoshop-retouched pictures as images of actual reality is more along the lines of fraud, although it might perhaps be motivated by bias.
How about this for bias: He's doing it because he has an arab-sounding name, therefore he's a hezbollah or lebanese sympathiser, which is what I see between the lines in some of the posts.
What, me prejudiced?
Some may feel uncomfortable being confronted with this thought, but that doesn't mean they weren't thinking it. More likely the photographer has no agenda, but doctored the photos simply to make a buck. He's freelance, after all and the better his pics the more he sells. Take it from a former freelance photographer.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your view of what is biased is of course dependent on what bias you already hold. Such is the nature of how we view truth. That you think the BBC is unbiased just tells me that you think their view of the world is the closest to yours.
I like to think a better measure of a news organization's worth is the value of news they bring to the viewer. The story about the Palestinian suicide bomber's family is worthwhile if it's done well. I'd say that its definately news if people from the same background continually blow themselves up to further some nebulous goal. What I mean by 'done well' is: did it explore different angles of a story. How did he/she get recruited? Did they get any fame/infame from the act? How do the rest of the family feel about what happened? What goal were they trying to acomplish, specifically how does killing oneself and a few disco kids further a cause? Their side of the story is very interesting no matter what your view of the world is. What's not interesting is being told what to think about an event without substantial information.
All news is biased. I would say that the BBC is amazingly biased, but that their style of reporting is excellent and interesting. Their view of the world is completely and utterly different than say someone living in Belize City, Sau Paolo, or Mumbai. What I don't like about FOX is not that they are biased, but that they just keep repeating the same story with 12 words over and over again. Their news is cheap propaganda. I find no substance in it; but then again most TV news is like that. Newspapers can be a little better, but often are not. The best stories I find are often pretty late in the news cycle after most people have lost their attention span. Documentaries by film makers, in depth stories in magazines like Soldier of Fortune and Playboy, and now-a-days some blogs have some great information. Business news is also extremely interesting because money is what drives almost all the decisions in the Western world.
Yeah, that one nearly made me spray my tea - the idea of anyone calling LGF a credible news source. They might have outed a fake or two, but they ignore other fakes, and the idea of it being anything other than 'ultra right wing rantings and a propaganda' lasts about as long as it takes to glance at their front page.
Not necessarily. I work in the developing world, and one of the biggest problems we face is poor quality monitors in rooms that are too bright. Most places in the tropics have very open buildings, and artificial lighting is a luxury, so one often finds oneself sitting in a room where an LCD screen is almost unusable. I imagine that, working as he does in Beirut, the circumstances he describes are quite plausible.
I'm not defending the photographer, by the way - I simply want to correct the assumption that he was talking nonsense.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
This is second one from Lebanon admitted to be faked. Ynet reports. Interesting times.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
"LGF's extreme anti-Muslim stance is often disturbing"...
Not nearly so disturbing as the anti-EverythingElse stance manifested throughout the Muslim world... makes one post anonymously, even.
Oh No! I inferred criticism of AN IDEOLOGY... I guess that makes me a dumb racist, right?
No wait, it doesn't.
The people who want to keep you feeling safe, the people who would keep you buying soap and sofa-beds and second cars, are neither right-wing, nor left-wing.
They are simply cowards.
We are at war. Like it or not.
The only thing I can think of is that he needed the smoke for steganography...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
So we are seeing a shift. If you cannot stand up to the enemy you must find another way to fight back. The geneva convention has rules about were you are supposed to fight. You are not allowed to use for instance civilians as a human shield, neither are civilians allowed to provide a shield or even assistence.
Terrorists do not obey the geneva rules. So they "can" use civilians as a shield, that is their great power. They can mingle between them, attack from within them, get support from them, and then just become them when they want to flee/hide. In fact, they are civilians. They do not wear a proper uniform for one or carry papers to identify them as soldiers of an army.
But the entire idea of innocent civilians who shouldn't be a target in war is a myth. A candyfloss coating we hope can reduce the horror of war. In reality pretty much every war has always targetted the civilian population. Even in the medieval wars were armies would do their fighting in the countryside properly lined up the winning army would usually go on a rampage through the opponents cities.
It is just the way things were/are. You are at war with the enemy and that means its leaders, its armies and its citizens.
Only recently have some of use become unable to accept this and it ain't working. Look at the recent Hiroshima remebrance. Did these same people mourn the countless deaths of japanese bombings? Offcourse not. Hiroshima was not a simple tit for tat, an way of ending a brutal war started by the japanese, supported by the japanese and carried out by the japanese. When you see a war victim of the atom bomb that is not a child, ask yourselve if they cheered when they read about their brave country men bombing undefended cities.
Offcourse they did.
The real problem with the innocent civilian attitude is that it tries to make war less horrible. I think the bombing on gana (or however you spell it) is too little. Go for an allout middle eastern war. Fullscale bombing with casualties in their millions. Perhaps then just like we had to learn in europe these people will have to learn that war is to costly an option.
But by keeping the casualties as low as they are now (just compare them to traffic accident victims) war keeps being an option. Syria still is spouting war because they never truly felt the horror off full out open war with Israel, just limited military casualties, the lebanese haven't done shit to respect the Israeli withdrawal and curb Hezbollah still thinking that they can exist in peace when its neighbour cannot and the Israeli's think they can just go to war and win easily anytime it is needed rather then make sure peace exist for all.
If you walk across one of the western european war grave sites and you see nothing more white markers across the horizon you can feel nothing but the need to stop war forever.
If you see a single kid dead on the street you want revenge. To make the enemy hurt. In this conflict both sides are seeing single deaths asking for revenge. Let it escalate so both sides, all sides must accept that revenge just leads to more revenge and that in the end both sides need to make up.
The only other option is for a solution like that wich happened in south africa. There all sides agreed that there were just two options, a peacefull, non-revengefull end to apartheid or civil war. That this was achieved is a true miracle and speak very highly of south africas people. Sadly this doesn't look likely in the middle east.
I see no end to the conflict unless they either go the south african way OR all sides accept that war just no longer is an option. And it takes all sides. So far none of the sides are willing to wage peace. Not the Israeli, not hezbollah/syria and not the l
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here's an interesting analysis of a selective framing incident.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?