For the second time in two days Reuters news agency had to
send all its clients an embarrassing "Picture Kill" advisory,
as two images sent in by its Beirut photographer, Adnan Hajj,
were exposed as having been digitally altered. Alert obervers
on web logs (known as "blogs") found that both images had
parts that were copied to make them appear more fearful than
they were, and to put Israel in a worse light than it
deserved.
On Sunday, Charles Johnson, who has a web log known as
LittleGreenFootballs.com, found that an image of Beirut
distributed by Reuters had been doctored to make it seem that
Israeli bombing raids did more damage than they really did.
The published image showed much more dark smoke than the
original, but sharp-eyed observers could see that much of the
smoke was not real (see images on page 9). It had been copied
from one part of the image to another using a technique known
as "cloning." The result made the damage look much worse than
it really was, and when the manipulation came to light it was
a profound embarrassment for Reuters. In these days of
digital images and sophisticated editing programs, many
liberties can be taken. If the products of a news
organization are under suspicion, it throws the integrity of
the entire organization into question.
After the fiasco on Sunday Reuters announced that it would
not use any more images from that photographer, but it did
not see fit to check out his past work, which included over
900 images.
On Monday, Rusty Shackleford of the My Pet Jawa web log,
found that another image of Hajj had been altered. Published
on August 2, it was captioned: "An Israeli F-16 warplane
fires missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh in southern
Lebanon." Shackleford noted that the plane was not firing
missiles at all, but rather taking defensive action, dropping
chaffe or flares as decoys for surface-to-air missiles.
Furthermore, the three flares visible are really only really
one one, along with two copies of it. And even furthermore,
the image shows the jet dropping two bombs, one of which is a
clear clone of the other suggesting that both are probably
fakes and showing conclusively another instance of photo
manipulation.
On Monday Reuters announced that it was deleting all of the
920 images in its database that were from Hajj, who worked
for them for more than a decade. Hajj also took many of the
photographs after the bombing at Kana two weeks ago which was
said to have killed many civilians. However many questions
were raised about some of those images.
Generally such incidents are not isolated and all of the
photographer's work is now suspect. Furthermore, many
observers have questioned the internal procedures of Reuters
that allowed such work to be published. Seasoned photo
editors said that the manipulation was evident and should
have been caught in internal reviews before it was released.
Reuters said that it would henceforth apply "tighter editing
procedure for images of the Middle East conflict to ensure
that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to
subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the
Reuters Global Pictures Desk."
The campaign in south Lebanon slogged on. After almost four
weeks of fighting, Hizbullah's rockets are still coming with
deadly effects. Sunday was the worst day yet, as 12 reserve
soldiers, Hy"d, were killed by a Hizbullah Katyusha in
Kfar Giladi. Contrary to regulations they were together in a
group even after the alarm had sounded. A survivor said that
there were almost constant sirens and they did not feel that
they were in danger. Three more were killed in Haifa Sunday
evening in a rocket attack on an Arab neighborhood.
The US and France had agreed on the wording of a resolution
to be passed in the UN Security Council that was supposed to
serve as a stepping-stone to a cease-fire. Further steps were
uncertain after the terrible losses on Sunday.
Israeli commandos were operating deep in Lebanon to try to
destroy more of the launchers that cause so much damage
throughout the north of Israel. Fierce fighting continued in
the south of Lebanon, including in the Hizbullah village of
Bint Jbail and other locations. In the six years that it
controlled the region, Hizbullah built an elaborate network
of tunnels and traps that it uses against Israeli soldiers.
Their fighters are well-equipped and thoroughly trained.
Israeli military experts say that they are far above
Palestinian terrorists in their fighting ability, and they
fight like soldiers of a sovreign state and not like a ragtag
militia. Experts said that it is worrisome that an untethered
militia could field such a force. Both in terms of the
equipment Hizbullah has — including night-fighting
equipment and sophisticated rockets — and the level of
training and motivation of the fighters it is unprecedented
that a stateless militia is at such a high level. Normal
nation states are restrained by their responsibility for the
safety of their civilians, but Hizbullah obviously feels none
of that. Now, Hizbullah provides a model of evil that other
terror organizations will try to emulate.
