Bloggers Bash Bogus Photos

Various coverage of how bloggers exposed fake "news" photos on Reuters:

Washington Post:Blogger Takes Aim At News Media and Makes a Direct Hit
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; Page C01

"Charles Johnson could tell there was something wrong with the news photo the minute he saw it. Something about the three plumes of black smoke rising over the buildings -- smoke just doesn't curl that way, pirouetting in unison. It was, he wrote Saturday, "blatant evidence of manipulation."

He was right on target.

The Reuters photo showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut was doctored. The British-based news service acknowledged as much Sunday, withdrawing that picture and another doctored image, of an Israeli jet, that were taken by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj. The agency subsequently severed its ties with the Lebanese photographer and purged its files of his work.

The exposure of the doctored airstrike photo was a coup for Johnson and his four-year-old political blog, Little Green Footballs. Make that a second coup, of sorts.

In September 2004, not long after "60 Minutes II" seemed to offer damning revelations about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, Johnson was at the forefront of bloggers who raised questions about the CBS report. (Johnson used the Microsoft Word program to retype the memos used in the report and found that his computer could reproduce the same typefaces and line breaks that Dan Rather had said were produced by a manual typewriter in the mid-1970s.) The incident became a historic debacle for the network and contributed to Rather's retirement from the "CBS Evening News" anchor chair."

Bloggers Drive Inquiry on How Altered Images Saw Print - New York Times

Like what blind editor would ever fall for this:

Adnan Hajj/Reuters

A photographer has been accused of doctoring a photo of an Israeli air raid on Beirut. The manipulated image, left, and the original picture, right.

Like ... how about the regular pattern on the right - looks like a curling iron was used on the "smoke"...


And :Strategy Page : Information Warfare:

"Pictures That Don't Tell the Story
August 12, 2006: As the scandal around Photoshopped and staged war-in- Lebanon photos used by various mainstream media outlets continues, it is becoming more obvious that what happens in newsrooms is having an effect on the war. Hizbollah, unable to defeat Israel via conventional means, resorted to the use of the Western media – which usually has very few restraints – to increase diplomatic and political pressure on Israel."