Bloggers recently discovered that at least two Reuters photographs were doctored by photographer Adnan Hajj. The discovery has led to Reuters firing Hajj and removing all 920 of his photographs. Blinq
blogs about the first discovered doctored photograph (seen on the right) that was revealed by Little Green Footballs in
this post.
Score one for Little Green Footballs.
The conservative blog cried foul after Reuters moved a photograph Saturday showing the aftermath of an Israeli bombing run in suburban Beirut. The two symmetrical plumes of black smoke smelled fake to LGF's Charles Johnson.
He looked again and saw buildings that appeared to have been cut and pasted. Johnson posts a series of close-ups and animations to make his point.
"It's so incredibly obvious...," he wrote. "Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There really is no question about it."
It's obvious that the photograph was edited with Photoshop's cloning tool to make it look smokier. An article about this particular photograph can be found
here.
Wizbang
blogs about a second Reuters photo that has been pulled after blogger
Rusty Shackleford proved it was a doctored photo. Reuters has since pulled
all 920 of Adnan Hajj's photos.
Editor & Publisher has an
article about Reuters firing Hajj.
On Monday, it added further charges, saying he had manipulated at least one other photo -- and that all of his more than 900 pictures had been deleted from the news agency's data base.
Reuters also said today it had put in place a tighter editing procedure for images of the Middle East conflict to ensure that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk, according to a Reuters spokeswoman.
“There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," said Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters Global Picture Editor, in a statement. "Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy."
He added that the fact that Hajj had altered two of his photographs meant none of his work for Reuters could be trusted either by the news service or its users.
It is good to see Reuters doing the right thing and firing the photographer for doctoring photographs. Bloggers will be very busy in the coming days looking closely at all photographs related to the Israel-Lebanon War.
Bloggers have been good at finding fake photographs in the past such as the
cloned troops in a Bush campaign advertisement and the Howard Kaloogian campaign where a
picture from Turkey was used as an example of a peaceful Baghdad scene.
