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| By israelinsider staff and partners August 6, 2006 |
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| The faked photo |
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Reuters has admitted that one of its published photos has been crudely distorted and, under pressure from bloggers, has "killed" a photo of a Beirut bombing and published an apology. The photographer credited, Adnan Hajj, also was responsible for some of the staged photographs from Qana, such as this one (discretion advised).
The Reuters caption on the doctored photo was: "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut?s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj"
Charles Johnson, published of the Little Green Footballs blog, says that the photo "shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop 'clone' tool to add more smoke to the image.
It's so incredibly obvious.... Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There?s really no question about it."
But it's not only the plumes of smoke that were "enhanced," Johnson writes. There are also cloned buildings, which the blog Left and Right illustrated in an animation.
In a published message, Reuters pulled the photo and said that "photo editing software was inappropriately used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvenience."
Reuters employees suspended for death threats
A Reuters has suspended an employee for sending a death threat to an American blogger. The message, sent by someone with the address zionistpig@hotmail.com, was: "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 pro-Israel, anti-Jihad site.
Johnson noted that "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."
He told ynetnews: "I think it's more than fair to say that Reuters has a big problem."
After bringing the threat to the attention of Reuters, Johnson was told by its Global Head of Communications, Ed Williams: "I can confirm that an employee has been suspended pending further investigation. The individual was not an employee of Reuters' news division."
Johnson further 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 contributed 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.
"There is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Bunglawala to the threat, but there is no way for me to verify this for certain. Only a Reuters network administrator would have access to the necessary records," Johnson said.
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