Cynics Unlimited

Merely days after CU expressed reservations about the accuracy media coverage in the Middle East, a new controversy has erupted:

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 websites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shiite Islamic group Hezbollah, now in its fourth week.
“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.

Granted Ms Whittle has a job to do, but she really needs to learn the difference between removing dust marks and cloning. The former involves the removal of “specks” on a digital photographs, and cannot possibly result in the disparity of colors shown below. By contrast, cloning involves copying a portion of a photograph to another part of the photograph. When done well the picture looks seamless and unaltered. Poor cloning results in an apparent texture pattern, which is clearly visible in the smoke patterns of this photo.

Reuters has lost any media source’s most important asset – credibility. Already, pundits are questioning the validity of Reuters’ Qana photographs and no doubt other photographs from Hajj are under scrutiny.

The original charge of photo manipulation was made by Charles Johnson of the popular Pro-Israeli blog Little Green Footballs. For his effort, Johnson was threatened via email and the email was IP traced to none other than Reuters. Current speculation is that Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, may have been involved in creating the threat. Meanwhile, more charges of doctored and staged photos are being levied by the hour.

The discovery of the doctored photos and forced admission of error by Reuters represents a huge victory for the blogosphere; by forcing a large media conglomerate to admit error and correct its ways, the independent online media has established itself as a semi-reliable check and balance on news disseminated by the mainstream media.

The loser in this skirmish is obvious. Hajj is clearly the instigator of the controversy, but clearly the blame belongs with the editing staff at Reuters. With a topic as divisive and high-stakes as the conflict in the Middle East, the news agency should be going over every piece of information it receives with a fine-toothed comb. Reuters could easily argue that LGF and other blogs attacking this story are partisan and no more interested in accuracy than Hajj, and they might be right; however, Reuters is supposed to differentiate itself from blogs (for which there is no minimum bar of journalistic integrity) with original, accurate and verified content. By not adhering to such standards, Reuters gives the public no reason to trust their reports any more than those of any idealist with a Blogspot account.

Also, Reuters, fire your PR department. That was a terrible excuse.