Big kudos to Charles at Little Green Footballs and his hat-tipper Mike for blowing this story wide open.
Where There's Smoke ...
Score one for Little Green Footballs.
The conservative blog cried foul after Reuters moved a photograph Saturday showing the aftermath of an Israeli bombing run in suburban Beirut. The two symmetrical plumes of black smoke smelled fake to LGF's Charles Johnson.
He looked again and saw buildings that appeared to have been cut and pasted. Johnson posts a series of close-ups and animations to make his point.
"It's so incredibly obvious...," he wrote. "Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There really is no question about it."
Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph and apologized, saying that "photo editing software was improperly used on this image....We are sorry for any inconvenience."
And this may be only the beginning.
Adnan Hajj, the photographer who sent the altered image, was also the Reuters photographer behind many of the images from Qana – which have also been the subject of suspicions for being staged.
