http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

What does everyone else make of this? If all these pictures discussed here are falsified, it's pretty damning.

I've been waiting for something like this to come to light for years now.

The mantra "If it bleeds, it leads" is all too accurate. While the people who finally sign off on news rarely lie, they do virtually no fact checking at all and trust sources even when they really should know better. As that quote from Twain illustrates, this is hardly anything new, and is more an indictment of privatized media as opposed to any specific company.

Basically the same accusations of intentional sensationalism and yellow journalism have been leveled going back as far as the Civil War, and probably before then, just without record. (one of my favorites occurs in Stephen Crane's War is Kind ... in 1899)

The only thing surprising about that is that they didn't do a better job editing the photos.

Sadly this isn't the first time this has been done, and it won't be the last. Anymore its getting tougher and tougher to tell where manipulation has occured with the tools available.
We had tons of lectures on this in our "ethics in journalism" classes in college. While I don't think the AP is putting these images forward knowing they are falsified, the photographers are working "freelance" most likely and they only get paid if their images are used - so they beef them up. Its sad, but also figure that in Lebanon there aren't as many photographers actively working covering the news as there are in the States and that they can get away with a lot more since no one is there to say otherwise.

I'm reminded of the Nat Geo cover with the pyramids and the controversy it caused. Here's a great link of other manipulations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation

I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot recently, and almost started a topic on it. Not only photo manipulation, but in movies the special effects have reached a level of consistancy and realism that they are no longer 'special.' How hard would it be to fake an entire war, or scandal, or disaster, or moon launch in the modern day and age? Especially where money is to be made, and with the benefit of nontraditional media like the internet to spread your message. Even if 'experts' on the web forums claim they can still spot a fake photoshop job, what happens in another ten years of technology? Starts to get scary after a while.

Truthfully, do you really know the mars rover landed? Or some random mudslide happened in a third world country you barely know - but darn it all, donate some cash for relief. Harder to fake, but how many people on this forum have actually seen Lebanon recently? Ya sure there's a war going on?

I'm being silly, but you get the point. If we're catching Reuters, its because they were sloppy, and little else.

the photographers are working "freelance" most likely and they only get paid if their images are used - so they beef them up.

Nail, head and busted moron's.I really dont think this BS is done for political reason's IE atempting to make Israel look even worse than the actuall photo's of less smoke producing bombed out bulidings.
Simply padding the paycheck and looking for Phatter lewts. Ain't capitalism peachy.

That picture of Lebanon, god... I can do a better job than that.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y97/Tranzure/Routers.jpg

I spent maybe 2 minutes on that.

Tran you should totally send that to Reuters :)

I think that it also could possibly be photographers that are sympathetic to the hezbollah cause.

There have been so many examples where it seems the doctoring was done just to make the Israeli's look like savages.



If you look at the photo below you will notice that there are two columns of smoke, but at a closer examination it is so obvious that the smoke and perhaps some of the buildings were photo shopped in. I would even go so far as to say that the photo is actually of Japan and not Lebanon.





http://www.diguardi.com/lebanonzilla.jpg

GODZIRRA!!!!!!
That reminds me of the "documents" I created right after the Dan Rather story aired. I just wanted to prove I could do a better job at faking documents.

http://www.geocities.com/lobo3315a/Kerry.jpg

At the time I thought it was hilarious that with Microsoft Paint, I did a better job at making a fake document.

Does this count as using a Prop?
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060829/481/e3ee8e74af024af0aed2d03d914a1c93
Hubba hubba!

Just keep in mind, LGF has its own agenda here too.

That's why I said "if" in my original post. I assume they have their own agenda. I just wanted to throw this out when I found it, I thought it could lead to a good discussion here.

Just keep in mind, LGF has its own agenda here too. Nefarious agenda! Pointing out bullshit fake photos used by terrorists for their successful propaganda campaigns!