Reuters Pulls All 920 Hajj Photos After Two Fakes Discovered
Steven L.
freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an
urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the
conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure
precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer
Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work.
“There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our
photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Szlukovenyi
said in a statement.
“Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and
constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this
strict and unalterable policy.”
The news and information agency announced the decision in an
advisory note to its photo service subscribers. The note also said
Reuters had tightened editing procedures for photographs from the
conflict and apologised for the case.
Removing the images from the Reuters database excludes them from
future sale.
Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after it found
that a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike
on suburban Beirut had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show
more and darker smoke rising from buildings.
An immediate enquiry began into Hajj’s other work.
It established on Monday that a photograph of an Israeli F-16
fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had also been
doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one
to three.
“Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and
contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout
its long and distinguished history. It undermines not only our
reputation but also the good name of all our photographers,” Szlukovenyi
said.
“This doesn’t mean that every one of his 920 photographs in our
database was altered. We know that not to be the case from the majority
of images we have looked at so far but we need to act swiftly and in a
precautionary manner.”
The two altered photographs were among 43 that Hajj filed directly
to the Reuters Global Pictures Desk since the start of the conflict on
July 12 rather than through an editor in Beirut, as was the case with
the great majority of his images.
Filing drills have been tightened in Lebanon and only senior staff
will now edit pictures from the Middle East on the Global Pictures Desk,
with the final check undertaken by the Editor-in-Charge, Reuters said.
Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff contributing photographer
from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005. Most of his work was in
sports photography, much of it outside Lebanon.
Hajj was not in Beirut on Monday and was not responding to calls.
He told Reuters on Sunday that the image of the Israeli air strike on
Beirut had dust marks which he had wanted to remove.
Questions about the accuracy of the photograph arose after it
appeared on news Web sites on Saturday.
Several blogs, including a number which accuse the media of
distorted coverage of the Middle East conflict, said the photograph had
been doctored.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07348592.htm
[
Just yesterday evening, the blog www.littlegreenfootballs.com found a
*second* Reuters photo, taken by Hajj, on a totally different aspect of
the war, that had also been doctored. One doctored photo could be a
fluke. But not two doctored photos on two different subjects.
So Reuters has been forced to pull everything Hajj photographed. Adnan
Hajj, meet Jayson Blair. :-)
]
--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
salad
> LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a
> freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an
> urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the
> conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
>
It's called psyops.
Wasn't the US gov't paying Republican supporters to basically the same
thing. It was revealed a few years ago bush was implementing a ministry
of disinformation to the world. That includes us too.
If the story's true than good for Reuters. One less lie floating in the
world.
A Brick in the Wall
"salad" <o...@vinegar.com> wrote in message
news:RgJBg.5613$0e5...@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...
I really liked the doctored "Made In China" boxes that magically had "Made
In USA" put on them for a backdrop at a Bush rally in St. Louis.
Oddly -- I don't recall Steven L. or any of the other bots complaining about
how that was wrong....
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/22/bush.boxes/index.html
Matti Partonen
"A Brick in the Wall" <NoS...@NoThanks.com> wrote in message
news:44d77...@newsfeed.slurp.net...
I do not have a link but I seem to remember a picture, possibly from a Bush
rally also, where the backdrop audience was created by replicating a small
group of faces ... not much fuss about it either.
Matti P.
depro...@rediffmail.com
Reuters Says Freelancer Manipulated Lebanon Photos
Reuters has fired Lebanese freelance photographer Adnan Hajj after he
transmitted at least two photographs from Lebanon that were doctored to
make Israeli attacks seem more dramatic.
The news agency said Monday it is investigating Hajj's other work and
has withdrawn all of Hajj's photos, about 920 images, from its archives
as a precaution.
Hajj's career with Reuters unraveled Saturday after Reuters sent its
subscribers one of Hajj's images of smoke rising from the Beirut
skyline. The image, which appeared on several news web sites, had been
doctored in Adobe Photoshop to show more smoke billowing higher into
the sky.
The manipulation was so ham-handed that popular political blogs,
beginning with Little Green Footballs, spotted it almost immediately.
The bloggers used it to fuel long-running accusations that Reuters's
news coverage is politically biased.
http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002914590
spino...@yahoo.com
confronted with much worse UNDOCTORED photos of broken children.
The problem is that just as a picture proves nothing, the proof that a
picture was doctored by one photojournalist in a good cause is of equal
logical weight close to zero.
No-one in his right mind reasons from a single picture. I was teaching
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra's proof of a generalization of the Pythagorean
theorem today, and the point of the proof (which proves something that
mathematicians already know) was that replacing the PICTURE of a right
triangle with logical symbolism including equivalence gets a useful
result for ALL triangles.
For the same reason, we conclude that Israel is a Fascist regime not
from any one picture but from the text of its repeated violations of
international law.
Roedy Green
<sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :
> LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a
>freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an
>urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the
>conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
Come on. Where is the url from reuters.com for your tempest in a Tea
Pot.
As usual your headline lies. Your body describes two doctored photos,
not fakes. A fake is something totally made up.
Further, you have been blaming Reuters, when it is a "freelance
Lebanese photographer" doing the touch ups.
Perhaps you recall the story of the ad where a touch up artist
inadvertently added an extra engine to a Boeing plane.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green, http://mindprod.com
See links to the Lebanon photos that Google censored at
http://mindprod.com/politics/israel.html
Bert Hyman
> On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 15:21:31 GMT, "Steven L."
><sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
> someone who said :
>
>> LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a
>>freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an
>>urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the
>>conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
>
> Come on. Where is the url from reuters.com for your tempest in a Tea
> Pot.
I know that you live under a rock, but this is incredible, even for you.
--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | be...@iphouse.com