Reutergate, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Terrorists

What a wild and woolly weekend it was for the blogosphere! Much like the days of Rathergate, except this time, the clueless target is al-Reuters rather than CBS. Here's what happened over the weekends-at least on the blogs that I read:

1. It all began with this post by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs (affectionately known as LGF in the blogosphere) on Saturday, August 5th, 2006. Charles begins his post with: "OK, now things are getting weird." In this post he posts the offending, fake Reuters photo that has been obviously doctored. The smoke has obviously doctored, anyone can see the repeating patterns in the smoke. And as Charles also mentions, unbelievably, some of the buildings in the picture have been duplicated with Photoshop. (This is done in Photoshop with the clone stamp tool.) Johnson identifies the photographer as Adnan Hajj. Mr. Johnson has had his life threatened by an email message sent from an al-Reuters email address.
2. Ace, at Ace of Spades Headquarters, jumps in with this post titled, Mr. Hajj, Meet Mr. Green Helmet. He backs off from declaring the photo faked. Then a little while later, he posts here, titled Big Update: The Original of that Doctored Photo?. He's guessing that someone will end up getting fired from all this: "Find that photo, and someone's getting fired. And then there's going to have to be a serious internal investigation by Reuters. And then the MSM is going to have re-examine its foreign stringer 'journalist' corps."
3. At about 7 PM that day, Curt at Flopping Aces posts and links to the LGF post. Curt notes, as did Charles Johnson, that Adnan Hajj was involved with the Drive By Media (MSM) coverage of the Qana bombing-which he also notes was a terrorist setup. He mentions the man who is now known in the blogosphere as the Green Helmet Guy and is the local mortician that was photographed with all the dead children. Green Helmet Guy does seem to pop up all over the place. Curt writes: "All in all, just another day with the biased MSM trying to make news rather then cover the news.  Pathetic and sad." This post has great images that clearly demonstrate the fake photos that al-Reuters has been passing off as legitimate journalistic photos. He has several examples of more Adnan Hajj photos that have most likely been doctored.
4. 2:05 AM, Ace links to the Small Dead Animals post naming the scandal-Reutergate!
5. Ace beats Powerline's post (below) declaring that yes, al-Reuters admits that the photo was doctored. Ace notices: "Even I can see the very suspicious 'clonings' of picture elements here. And I'm an idiot." And: "It's not just this one picture. It is the MSM's "outsourcing" of most foreign news coverage to low-paid, low-experience, low-credentials, foreign "local" stringers who almost certainly have a very strong personal interest in 1) juicing their stories and pictures to make sure they sell and 2) advancing a political goal of slandering Israel that most Muslims, sadly, seem to share."
6. Now fast forward to Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at about 7 AM. Powerline's post informs us that al-Reuters has admitted that the photo was doctored and they post al-Reuters' advisory. A Powerline reader asks: "The key questions: What else has been faked? What else has been manipulated? Who are the people hired by Western news agencies to report from Lebanon? What are their backgrounds? It's time to look even more carefully at Qana."
7. Thomas Lifson, editor at The American Thinker, says: "Stop the Pixels!" He rightly praises Charles Johnson at LGF for finding a way to clearly demonstrate the fraud. Lifson notes: "We live in two different worlds, as the old pop song had it. One world employs local stringers who may well either be under the thumb of Hezbollah, Hamas, or other villainous groups, or who are outright partisans. But they claim to be objective. The other world, that of internet journalists, acknowledges upfront their political perspectives, and goes after the truth, unafraid to raise and answer questions in a continuing inquiry...The other world, or course, is that of internet journalism. As we saw in the Rathergate memos, serious inquiry into media manipulation of public opinion takes place first on the internet, where questions are asked, facts are dug up, analyses tested, and conclusions gradually strengthened as the evidence warrants. It is an interactive and collective inquiry. Adopting the language of the Japanese philosopher and entrepreneur Konnosuke Matsushita, I call this powerful intellectual process, 'The wisdom of the many.'" In an update to this post, Mr. Lifson quotes another blogger who has found a 2004 complaint against Adnan Hajj.
8. Next up is Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters. His post titled, "What You Need To Know About Diplomacy And Journalism In War" is important because it explains clearly the double standard against Jews that is employed by the Drive Media (MSM) and diplomats.
9. Back now to Charles Johnson at LGF. In this post he notes the unbelievably lame excuse that al-Reuters uses as an "explanation of why Adnan Hajj concocted an entirely faked photograph of a nonexistent Beirut." al-Reuters doesn't blame themselves for this outrage, but rather that Hajj was just trying to remove dust marks-in other words he was just trying to be a responsible photographer (eye roll).
10. The Green Helmet Guy makes another appearance in this post, this time in Tyre doing what he seems to spend a lot of time doing, "making sure wire service photographers get close-up pictures of dead bodies."
11. Rusty Shackleford finds another faked Adnan Hajj photo (HT: LGF).
12. Michelle Malkin, as she usually does, posts a superb set of links along with a spot on cartoon.
13. Kim at Wizbang notes that al-Reuters has fired the photographer, Adnan Hajj.
14. Rush Limbaugh, on his Monday radio show's opening monologue, describes how the evidence against al-Reuters is absolutely devastating. Rush says he thinks this is serious because Americans tend to believe big media. The media has clearly chosen sides with Hezbollah.
15. This story goes on and on in the blogosphere. For more, keep checking Little Green Footballs (you may have to keep checking back with LGF as that blog has, no surprise, gotten lots and lots of traffic in the last couple of days), Ace of Spades Headquarters, Michelle Malkin and Flopping Aces.

UPDATE: Via Ace-al-Reuters has pulled all 920 Adnan Hajj photos: "Reuters' global picture editor said there was "no graver breach" than the deliberate alteration of pictures. If that's the case -- why wasn't he more vigilant about patrolling for this gravest of all breaches? Even an idiot, as I said, could see that pic was altered. Does Reuters' global editor not even rise to the level of idoicy?"

UPDATE II: A blog for all notes (via Dan Riehl) that Adnan Hajj has another day job: "He's found Hajj's other job via a CSM report. He's an economic editor for the daily newspaper As-Safir. So, on top of producing photo edited works that exaggerate or distort the situation in Lebanon, he's also editing a Lebanese paper and quite likely overstating the effects of the Israeli campaign against Hizbullah as well as providing an additional outlet for his photographic business..."

UPDATE III: Michelle Malkin says that Reuters shouldn't pull the 920 Adnan Hajj photos, rather they should post them all so the bloggers can analyze them all and find out which ones were faked with Photoshop.

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