Reuters
By now, you're probably familiar with the fraudulent work of Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj, whose photos were used by Reuters until they learned that he doctored images before submitting them (and subsequently fired him). So far, it's been established that Hajj (1) photoshopped an image of Beirut in the aftermath of an Israeli attack to include more and darker plumes of smoke rising over the city and (2) manipulated an image of an Israeli fighter plane dropping flares over southern Lebanon to increase the number of flares dropped from one to three. Reuters summarily dismissed Hajj and removed his photos from its archives.
The scandal has its obvious Jayson Blair overtones, but the underlying story has disquieting implications in its own right. That Hajj, a Lebanese national, was able to submit fraudulent pictures of war-torn Lebanon to a major global news organization is potentially damaging to the credibility of any journalist covering any side of a conflict — and it forces us to question whether a major MSM outlet has unwittingly been shuffling Hezbollah propaganda to its readers. To be sure, the situation in Beirut and throughout Lebanon is dire (as it is in Israel, and in Iraq), but in an era when photographers can photoshop (albeit not very well, in Hajj's case) images to make situations appear worse than they are (and again, in Hajj's case, only marginally worse), the credibility of photojournalism (and journalism as a whole) is seriously undermined. Reuters' dismissal of Hajj and removal of his work from its database is an acknowledgement of this fact, but this scandal is much too Wag the Dog (scary) for comfort.
Finally, it's worth mentioning the way the blogs (again) made this story happen. Over the weekend, ETP noted that the Mel Gibson brouhaha would never have happened without internet journalism (thanks, TMZ!). Blogs like The Jawa Report and Little Green Footballs have advanced the story so much so that, in Reuters' story on the Hajj dismissal, it noted that "Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke" (emphasis added). Go new media!
— Danny Shea
