southchild

Yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent article on Reuters entitled “Jihad Journalism?”

Media Bias: Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige.

Over the weekend, a Reuters photographer was caught trying to make one of Israel’s defensive attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon look much more devastating than it was. The photo was eventually withdrawn and the photographer ostensibly fired.

The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj, a freelance Lebanese photographer, shows two heavy plumes of smoke where there was in fact but one.

Charles Johnson, whom we will return to later, is one of several bloggers who noted that some buildings were repeated in the altered photo as well.

Reuters’ explanation? “Photo editing software was improperly used on this image. . . . We are sorry for any inconvenience.”

An apology to clients is nice. But what about an apology to Israel for employing staff members who are trying to inflame world opinion against a nation that is already globally hated?

Here we return to Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog. For his effort in pointing out the phoniness of the photograph, he got a warm message from a Reuters account that said: “I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut.” The so-far-unidentified person used “zionistpig” as his or her e-mail address.
…

Is Reuters a patsy or collaborator? Either way, it is helping the cause of terrorism and undermining civilization.

Unless it wants to become just another branch of Al-Jazeera, it had better make meaningful institutional changes soon.

Read the full article for a itemized list of suspicious Reuters “missteps” which, coincidentally, always manage to smear Israel. So, “is Reuters a patsy or collaborator?” What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.