Fake Pictures

[King Rat]

Now that Reuters and the AP have been caught using doctored photos in news articles covering the Israeli-terrorist war, how much faith can we put into "seeing is believing"?

One Reuters photographer was reported to have added smoke to a photo of a building bombed by Israel. Photos of the opinion-changing-bombing in Kana (which also has been proven a fraud) reportedly used the same corpse over several hours of picture-taking. Reuters and the AP also published their own pictures of a woman crying outside her bombed (by Israel) apartment building recently. The only problem was that apparently the same woman was transposed onto photos of two different buildings.

Reuters has "corrected" the problem by deleting all photos taken by the offending photographer from their database. Wouldn't it be nice if they also corrected the record? I'm not sure how much the AP has admitted yet or what, if anything, they have done to ensure the integrity of photos submitted by their photographers.

It is just too easy to create fake photos. For some time now our only reason to believe what we are seeing has been the reputation of news agencies such as Reuters and the AP. Now that is lost.

And the really troubling thing is that all the pictures shown to be faked have been faked AGAINST Israel. That, to me, is much, much more than just faking a picture - that is faking the news to fit an agenda.

[granny2young]

I personally had a story ran in the paper almost a year ago and I couldn't believe the guy that wrote it actually interviewed me for it! Nothing I said was in there, and a whole lot of what I didn't say was in there. Makes you wander about journalism these days. After that, and after a friend of mine recently was in the news, I believe nothing they have to say. It's sad who easy they get the facts confused.

[missfairy]

I got interviewed, along with the other members, for a Halloween article in the d.j. about the ghost-hunting group I was in. (2 yrs ago, I think) They had quotes from me which I never said and also had credited some things I actually said to another member of the group! How can you possibly screw it up that bad?! Either way, they made me sound like some kind of silly tv psychic or something. I was highly insulted.

[granny2young]

I was very insulted too missfairy. The article made me sound bad too, and even had my relatives and friends calling me over it.

[King Rat]

Reuters' "picturegate" has now spread to the New York Times. The NYT printed a picture of a dead man lying in the rubble of a building Israel bombed with a caption decrying the dead still being pulled from the rubble. Later, however, the NYT printed another picture with the corpse standing (very much alive) in front of different backdrop.

[King Rat]

Another one: Either the NYT or the AP (I forget which) ran a story showing a five-year-old girl killed by an Israeli bomb. The pictures were graphic as her father carried her bloody body in his arms. Trouble is, the girl died from a head injury when she fell from a swing. Israel had nothing to do with it.

[granny2young]

that is sad!