10 Replies to ““It’s not just Reuters””

1. Robb Allen says:

   August 9, 2006 at 4:08 pm

   Well, depends on how you define ‘shocked’

   If you mean – As shocked as waking up to find that the latest edition of Guideposts have not, in fact, been stapled to your testicles, then yeah.

2. mojo says:

   August 9, 2006 at 4:15 pm

   ”…The man pictured, who had been seen in previous images appearing to assist with the rescue effort, was injured during that rescue effort, not during the initial attack, and was not killed.”

   Ok, I’m confused. I mean, shouldn’t he have some injury if he was injured? What’d he do, twist his ankle?

   SB: effects
   
   generally follow causes

3. Dan Collins says:

   August 9, 2006 at 4:40 pm

   And when the radical priest come to get me released, we was all on the cover of Newsweek.

4. ajacksonian says:

   August 9, 2006 at 5:17 pm

   Not only is it not just Reuters, AP, NYT… but the entire industry has a problem of now having doctored images in their archives.  And since Adnan Hajj had been a stringer selling material for *years* and Reuters, in particular, already had a complaint about him in 2004, there is a question as to the integrity of the oversight process the MSM is exercising on its materials.  Photoshop and cheap, high capability computers have ended the era of requiring specialists and a photolab to doctor images.

   Further, there is apparent manipulation and staging of events that is not amenable to any single news outlet to properly put into contextual timelines.  So even while the reporter may be giving a factual accounting of what he or she has been told, the actual evidence of the images tells a different story.  And getting at a *story* is the problem:  not all news is part of a single story, but one event that is contextual within space, time and other events.  By not placing *any* context to events and by trying to fit them into a *story* the actual, factual part of the events are getting lost.

   This fabrication and passing it off as reality is worse than just fiction:  it is a replacement of factual events with created ones which may or may not bear any relationship to what really happened.  The imagery, in particular, is a primary historical document have context in space and time that is amenable to other images in that same area and timeframe to showing how things have happened and what is going on beyond any single story.  When imagery is doctored or fabricated, that is working to replace a historical capture of events with an artistic rendering of them.  The reliability of these things is thus degraded and our ability to comprehend them either in pieces or as a whole is similarly degraded.  Note this is *not* an attack on the professional work to bring a compelling image to the public via necessary photoenhancement to allow it to be adequately displayed on a variety of monitors that are not color calibrated or onto print media of 4 or more color variety.  That is understood and time honored as a professional necessity. 

   And as desktop computing power and imagery tools both increase in scope and power, the ability to render entire fabrications that are photorealistic then moves the goalposts on veracity even further.  How long has this been going on and how deep is the problem are both questions that no one would have even bothered to ask 20 years ago.  Adnan Hajj was caught becaus he was a poor *artist*.

5. Robb Allen says:

   August 9, 2006 at 5:27 pm

   Adnan Hajj was caught becaus he was a poor *artist*.

   This is what scares me the most. I do wedding and children’s photography. Shooting digital is a major boon to me – I can easily correct closed eyes, glare on glasses, zits, small chunks of vomit on the groom’s tux, etc. There have been times where one person was on the shitter / outside smoking / hitting on the ringbearer (that was a Catholic wedding if I recall correctly) and missed a group shot. I’d take another picture of them from another shot and merge them into the group photo. And when I do it, you can blow it up to 16×20 and not be able to tell.

   Imagine how much ‘reality’ has been distorted by the press to sell a story (political bias be damned).

6. mojo says:

   August 9, 2006 at 6:02 pm

   You can’t believe what you see in pictures. Haven’t been able to for years now. Pictures lie, if the photog (or post-processor) wants them to.

   This is news? Where ya been?

   SB: plant
   
   kinda like an animal, but doesn’t move so much.

7. McGehee says:

   August 9, 2006 at 7:21 pm

   And when the radical priest come to get me released, we was all on the cover of Newsweek.

   You’re on your way, Dan. I don’t know where you’re going but you’re on your way.

8. DirtCrashr says:

   August 9, 2006 at 10:14 pm

   They’ve been caught doing it to pictures, including the staging – but this has been going on a long time with numbers already, besides words.

9. Rusty says:

   August 9, 2006 at 10:46 pm

   The real scary part is that the man behind the curtain that we’re not supposed to pay any attention to, is a frickin’ idiot.And all the other curtain lurkers think that’s just peachy.

10. -Ed. says:

    August 10, 2006 at 1:12 am

    Come on!  That guy is a hottie!  Especially lying there with his shorts down and his manly hydraulic thingy nearly exposed.  No wonder the Old Gray Lady went for him – he’s even sexier than Bill Clinton’s hands!

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