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August 6, 2006
Reuters Still Owes Us An Explanation

Reuters took a necessary first step in rectifying the insult they gave their customers by publishing the crassly doctored photos supplied by Adnan Hajj. The wire service terminated his employment earlier today:

Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut.

The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week.

Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke. ...

"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

Hopefully this absurd explanation contributed to the decision by Reuters to terminate Hajj. That insults the intelligence. If he used film, he only had to produce another print. If he used digital photography, then he should have seen dust on his lens immediately after taking the photograph -- and cleaned his lens and re-shot.

This doesn't end here, either, as Rusty and Dan Riehl have discovered. Adnan "Dusty" Hajj appears to have had a lot of problems with clean pictures and dark environments, as it looks like he became quite adept with Photoshop. Be sure to read through their deconstruction of other Hajj images.

Reuters owes us an explanation -- in fact, a couple of them. First, how did the editors at Reuters manage to miss the crude alterations Hajj made to the image in question? Is it because his doctoring helped bolster their own agenda in covering this war? Second and even more importantly, why has Reuters not pulled all Hajj images from their service? If he was willing to doctor his photos with Photoshop, why would anyone trust him not to stage his other efforts at photojournalism for his own political purposes?

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at August 6, 2006 8:04 PM

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» Reuters Fake Photo Scandal - How Deep Does It Go? from Getting Nothing But Static From MSM
we need to know who hired and managed Adnan Hajj, and what were his political activities before and after Reuters hired him. Were there clear signs that Reuters missed signals that should have lead management to question whether Hajj was the activist... [Read More]

Tracked on August 6, 2006 11:59 PM

» More Reuters fakery from Mark My Words
Courtesy of Adnan Hajj, imagine that. In this case we have a photo here that Reuter's captioned as an Israeli jet firing missiles. [Read More]

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» Reuters, Photoshop and an Emerging Picture of Bias from Webloggin
Many people, particularly bloggers and authors on the right have been questionaing the objectivity of the mainstream media. At the very least we must ask ourselves if the press is living up to its professional duty to present the news in an unbiased an... [Read More]

Tracked on August 7, 2006 5:01 AM

» The Knucklehead of the Day award from The Florida Masochist
Today's winner is the News agency Reuters. [Read More]

Tracked on August 7, 2006 7:03 AM

» Reuters Busted by US Blogs on Picture Fraud from Assorted Babble by Suzie
Just how many lies are out there that sparked international demonstrations over Qana?Now The Jawa Report exposes another fake photo from Reuters. [Read More]

Tracked on August 7, 2006 9:31 AM

» Lebanese PM, MSM Winning PR War Against Israel from PartisanTimes.com
An Israeli air raid earlier today on Lebanon's southern border village of Houla elicited a tearful response from Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. Speaking during an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, Saniora claimed that 40 people... [Read More]

Tracked on August 7, 2006 12:36 PM

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