"Where there's smoke...."

Well, it seems bloggers are making deep inroads into the mainstream press, once again. This time, by pointing out the doctoring of a Reuters photograph, posted on Saturday. Flopping Aces has some of the best analysis and blog roundup on this.

Reuters has since retracted the photo, as well as issuing a statement. The Lebanese freelance photographer in question is Adnan Hajj. His reason for the doctoring?

He told Reuters on Sunday that the image of the Israeli air strike on Beirut had dust marks which he had wanted to remove.

He really did an excellent job removing those dust marks, now didn't he? Reuters mentions that a hasty review of his work over the weekend reveals at least one other image of his also had "dust marks"; apparently those dust marks were covering 2 other flares instead of just the one that originally appears in a photograph of an Israeli F-16 firing a missile in an air strike on Nabatiyeh. Jawa Report has the analysis.

Hajj's photos are 2 out of 43 photographs he has filed directly to the Reuters Global Pictures Desk, since the start of the current conflict. Here is the complete work of Adnan Hajj, found through Power Line. Also at Power Line, is this interesting remark by Ken Sanders,

There is NO WAY this one guy could be taking all of these pictures - look at the images and dates. Does he have a flying car? The question: is he simply a clearinghouse for Hezbollah propaganda, routed expeditiously through Reuters? Looks like they pay the guy to forward unverified images (sometimes doctored or staged, as you've helped explain) taken by others.

I think the bias and the dishonesty in reporting stretches beyond one "mere" photographer caught with his hand in the photoshop jar.

I'm still in the middle of Stephanie Gutmann's "The Other War". If you have not heard of it, I strongly recommend you pick it up if you are still reluctant to believe that Reuters, the AP, CNN, and much of mainstream media is not trustworthy and not impartial in the way they report the news. Many people have had their opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict colored by the agenda-driven AP photographers pushing an image of an Israeli military goliath bullying boys throwing stones; had their views shaped by liberal journalists and by Academia, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. As Bret Stephens, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, wrote: "...the norm tends to be one of strict factual accuracy and routine contextual dishonesty."

Other links worth checking out:

Michelle Malkin mentions The Dissident Frogman who has a very cool video demonstration of how the photoshop alteration was done.

Intimidation of the press in the Middle East

Why Israel is losing the media war

The Other War in Qana

Pallywood over at Mike's America

EU Referendum on "Who is this man?"
and "The 'Green Helmet' mystery continues"

Assorted Babble has a good roundup.