al-Reuters: Busted on photoshopping

For those of you who wonder why I refer to Reuters as al-Reuters, it's because they have a decidedly anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist viewpoint. Their stated policy is "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word 'terrorist.'" 'Nuff said on that.

Well, now al-Reuters has been caught dead to rights on a Photoshop job, and the purveyors of truth are none other than the hard workers of the blogosphere. You know, those of us who do the work that the MSM refuses to do? Little Green Footballs, who really came into their own when they glared the light of truth on Dan Rather's swan song story based on forged documents, has struck gold once again.

al-Reuters, caught with their hand in the jihadist cookie jar, has killed their doctored photo and issued a lukewarm apology/retraction. Here are the Reutered "before" and the non-Reutered replacement (and actual) pictures:




As you can see, the photographer (named Adnan Hajj) used the clone-stamp tool within Photoshop to paint more smoke into the sky above Beirut to make the carnage look much worse than it already was. Graphics expert Jeff Harrell has specifics here. As LGF notes:

This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image. (Hat tip: Mike.)

It’s so incredibly obvious, it reminds me of the faked CBS memos. Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There’s really no question about it.

But it’s not only the plumes of smoke that were “enhanced.” There are also cloned buildings. (See below.)

You should really check out the cloning of smoke, buildings, etc. Arguably the worst photoshop job ever. It seems like if one is going to sacrifice his/her career, he/she would at least make a half-hearted attempt to look somewhat accurate, right?

LGF and others have shown Hajj's work to be subject to not only doctoring, but staging. Michelle Malkin points out the archive of Hajj's dirty work. As LGF's big dawg Charles Johnson observes, "This has to cast doubt not only on the photographer who did the alterations, but on Reuters' entire review process. If they could let such an obvious fake get through to publication, how many more faked or 'enhanced' photos have not been caught?" "Enhanced" could also mean "staged", correct?

Maybe it's just Hajj and not Reuters overall, right? OK, maybe not.

Also, LGF has apparently done so well with this exposé that an al-Reuters employee (or contractor...or free-lancer?) has threatened him thusly:

A Reuters employee has been suspended after sending a death threat to an American blogger.

The message, sent from a Reuters internet account, read: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."

It was sent to Charles Johnson, owner of the Little Green Footballs (LGF) weblog, a popular site which often backs Israel and highlights jihadist terrorist activities.

In the threat, the Reuters staff member, who has not been named, left his email address as "zionistpig" at hotmail.com.

Reporting the message to his readers, Johnson wrote on his website: "This particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News."

Speaking to Ynetnews, Johnson said: "I was surprised to receive a threat from a Reuters IP, but only because it was so careless of this person to use a traceable work account to do it."

He added: "I think it's more than fair to say that Reuters has a big problem."

Photoshopping his images, issuing death threats from work...it seems to me that al-Reuters' jihadist camel jockeys aren't the brightest Islamfascists in the world, now are they? In what is I'm sure a big coinkidink...:

In an additional twist, Johnson traced the movements of the sender of the threat, and found direct parallels between the internet locations of the sender and Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Bunglawala, who contirbuted an editorial to the Guardian website, has attracted negative attention in the past after making anti-Semitic outbursts, and has declared that the British media was "Zionist-controlled."

In the comment section of the Guardian, underneath his own editorial, Bunglawala denied sending the threat, blaming "Zionists" instead.

"That was not me! Methinks some Zionists are up to mischief," he wrote.

al-Reuters "suspended" said employee. Kudos to LGF for forcing their hand on that.

When are you ostrich MSM'ers going to smell the freakin' coffee? The blogosphere is here to guarantee that your decades of unchallenged leftist anti-American anti-Semitic biased drivel have come to an end. We canned Dan Rather and his hit squad, we just canned a pro-terrorist Reuters photographer, and if the rest of you aren't careful, we'll get your asses dismissed faster than a Clinton mistress, too!

UPDATE (8/7/2006 - 7:24 a.m. EST): Michelle Malkin has links to other bloggers that have even more Hajj Photoshopped images of the Israel-Lebanon conflict:

An Israeli F-16 firing "missiles", known to the rest of us as flares! Or should I say flare, singular? The flare was copied in the same manner as the smoke in the above pictures! Link here;

A building that was damaged in "southern Beirut, July 24 2006" was also, amazingly..."flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006"! Link here.

This is simply criminal, people!