Reuters Admits Photo Is Doctored; Suspends Hajj: Promises Investigation

Fast. But we're not done with this guy. Or Reuters.

In the message, Reuters said that "photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience." Reuters' head of PR Moira Whittle said in response: "Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures."

"As soon as the allegation came to light, the photograph, filed on Saturday 5 August, was removed from the file and a replacement, showing the same scene, was sent. The explanation for the removal was the improper use of photo-editing software," she added.

The Ynet article quotes different bloggers offering their take on the picture. Do they quote me predicting this would happen four days ago?

No. Here's the "Ace" quote they thought should be shared with the world:

The author of the Ace of Spades blog wrote: "Even I can see the very suspicious "clonings" of picture elements here. And I'm an idiot."

Sigh. That is, sadly, the true Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM), in a nutshell.

Thanks to thelinyguy for the heads up.

An Anyonymous Commenter With Limited Fluency In English Earlier Opined:

The smoke that is. All these interpretations of buildings is a bit puzzling. LGF had a second photo of Beirut for comparison and it also showed the same building that was supposed to be photoshopped into only one of them.

If you stop and use your head you won't find any purpose to inventing the Beirut skyline so you can assume you are going off the rails a bit there.

Shall we still assume we're going off the rails a bit, dear?

And near the end of this thread, in a long, long anonymous post, another anonymous twit accused LGF or Left and Right (not sure which) of "manipulating" the photo themselves in order to slander Reuters.

The propagandist copied the buildings from the bottom left of the pic and pasted (cloned) them higher and to the right. Then they reduced the size to make it proportional for the further distance were it was pasted. Then used the blur tool on the clone that they pasted.

People will do anything or believe anything that advances the “dishonest� MSM meme.

Heh. If that's confusing to you, he's explaining how "the propagandandist" (either LGF or L&R) manipulated one of their animated gif's showing cloned buildings to make it look like the Reuters photo was faked, when in fact it was not.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

How's all that analysis lookin' now to you, dude?

The left, which claims the media is biased against them, somehow always manages to jump to their defense, huh?

FLASHBACK: BLOG JUSTICE FOR DEATH-THREAT REUTERS JIHADI: A completely different story. Another solid citizen of Reuters, who just happens to follow the Religion of Peace (NTTAWWT), and who just happened to leave death-threat-ish comments at LFG's blog, has finally been suspended after an interminable investigation.

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.

Reporting the message to his readers, Johnson wrote on his website: "This particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News."

...

In an additional twist, Johnson traced the movements of the sender of the threat, and found direct parallels between the internet locations of the sender and Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Bunglawala, who contirbuted an editorial to the Guardian website, has attracted negative attention in the past after making anti-Semitic outbursts, and has declared that the British media was "Zionist-controlled."

In the comment section of the Guardian, underneath his own editorial, Bunglawala denied sending the threat, blaming "Zionists" instead.

"That was not me! Methinks some Zionists are up to mischief," he wrote.

Interesting see the sort of people Reuters is hiring to snap its pictures and write its opinion columns, isn't it?

PS, I think this guy was supposedly some sort of "moderate" Muslim. The column that came under fire, and set him off on wishing for "Zionsists'" throats to be cut, was about bridging the differences between Islam and Christianity (by repudiating Christianity, of course!).

Had enough?

CORRECTION: I originally presented this as if it was a new story. It's from May 30th. I guess I forgot the resolution of this, or didn't notice it at the time.

I apologize for the error. I've changed it to "FLASHBACK" to indicate it's old news.

posted by Ace at 10:57 AM

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