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In the hardly surprising column of recent news...

Yesterday I ran across a post on Don Surber about a possible photo manipulation by Reuters.

Apparently someone at Reuters doctored a photo from Lebanon. Maybe not.

Reminds me of that OJ Simpson cover of Newsweek a few years back. You have to see it.

I left this comment:

Hard to tell if that's bad processing of the image or intentional addition of smoke that wasnt there to begin with.

Then this morning I find this from Drudge:

Reuters admits altering Beirut photo

Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation.' Reuters' head of PR says in response, 'Reuters has suspended photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to photograph'

Well, pardon me for trying not to be too cynical. Be sure to read that entire story at the link above. They have a good collection of blogger comments as this developed.

Here are the photos, I'll start with the original that was called into question.

And now, the photo that Reuters has released after admitting the first one had been edited.

I have to admit, that it was pretty obvious before, but I was held back by my desire to avoid reflexive cyncism. But wow, what a horrible editing job! Obviously a graphics program's cloning tool was used and it appears that more than the smoke was cloned as Left & Right shows here.

I wonder, will the photographer be fired for faking the photo, or for doing so in such a horrible manner that even non-professionals could see it immediately? Also, what kind of mental pathology must be at work to result in someone even thinking that a crap chop job was even necessary in the first place?

PS: Be sure to check out Ace's post on the matter. He has links, the best are probably to LittleGreenFootballs but they're site is unaccesible at the moment, probably due to heavy traffic. Excellent points made by Ace:

PPPS: I don't want to oversell this, but this could be Rathergate II: The Revenge, that we've all been waiting for.

It's not just this one picture. It is the MSM's "outsourcing" of most foreign news coverage to low-paid, low-experience, low-credentials, foreign "local" stringers who almost certainly have a very strong personal interest in 1) juicing their stories and pictures to make sure they sell and 2) advancing a political goal of slandering Israel that most Muslims, sadly, seem to share.

It would be one thing if, given economic realities, Reuters et al. did this but made sure they applied some very serious vetting to this material back at the home office.

But they don't. Whatever pictures come across their desks -- the obviously propagandized pictures from Qana, this absurd doctoring of smoke plumes to make the wreckage in Beirut seem more extensive and dramatic and, most important of all, disproportionate -- they simply publish without even the most basic scrutiny.

If this shoddy, crude forgery got past their vaunted "multiple layers of painstaking editorial fact-checking," what in the world would not?

PPS: Apparently Reuters has a problem with employees, not just stringers.

Reuters employee issues 'Zionist pig' death threat

A Reuters employee has been suspended after sending a death threat to an American blogger.

The message, sent from a Reuters internet account, read: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."

It was sent to Charles Johnson, owner of the Little Green Footballs (LGF) weblog, a popular site which often backs Israel and highlights jihadist terrorist activities.

In the threat, the Reuters staff member, who has not been named, left his email address as "zionistpig" at hotmail.com.

[...]

Correction: The above story is from May 30 and should be noted as a flashback. Somehow I missed it then, sorry about that.

Ah, multiculturalism, what fun thou hath wrought.

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Filed under: MSM -- Terrorism

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