Smoke Gets In His Eyes

Boy has the Inquirer sunk all of a sudden.

In addition to the item below where the Editorial Board basically told the Democrats to sit down, shut up, play nice and vote for Holy Joe Lieberman, now blogger Dan Rubin gives kudos to Little Green Footballs because the freeper blog detected a problem with a Reuters photo of a bombing in suburban Beirut in Lebanon.

Of course, as you might expect, LGF is highly outraged over the photo which turned out to be doctored (and the Reuters news agency has owed up to it), and in typical “persecution complex” mode, blames (along with kindred sites) the “MSM’s” use of local photojournalists who surely have an axe to grind against Israel (they say), under the pretext that these news organizations have slim budgets and have to use locals for the pictures.

I’m sure that that’s the reality of the situation (though I should point out I’m not omniscient and cannot guess as to the political instincts of individuals taking the pictures who I’ve never met in a country to which I’ve never traveled).

Also, another right wing site called Shape of Days criticized a Reuters photographer for taking a photo of a child killed by a collapsing building that may have been shelled by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The criticism of the photo is that it was “disturbing.”

This is war. What do you expect?

The photo of the dead child was taken in the Lebanon city of Qana, and this is noteworthy because of this link to a site that describes how the IDF has now stated that it lied in its account of the recent bombing of that city. This is dutifully ignored by Rubin and LGF of course; Rubin casually links to LGF in his post when mentioning the controversy over Dubya’s National Guard service and the forged documents from Bill Burkett (though I believe Mary Mapes, news producer of the controversial CBS report, stood by the docs - and what exactly does this have to do with the Israel-Hezbollah war anyway?).

(Also, there's a reference in the "LGFWatch" link at the end to a "Green Helmet guy" who, according to LGF, is someone who is making sure that everyone knows where the Israelis bombed in an effort to continue to make the IDF look bad for propaganda reasons against Israel. To be honest with you, though, I think the "LGFWatch" link listing all of the IDF retractions over the Qana bombing does that pretty well all by itself.)

I realize that Rubin's sourcing of LGF is a product of the inevitable blurring of news and opinion due to the influence of high-profile blogs on either side of the political spectrum, but before we worry about doctored pictures, I’d pay more attention to doctored news accounts first.

Update 8/8: See, freepers, a news organization like Reuters actually has its own internal controls and procedures for this sort of thing (and I got a kick out of the fact that they gave no credit whatsoever to Little Green Snotballs for it, who of course will continue to shout that this is the latest "liberal media conspiracy.")