***update – results: The NYTimes issues a correction to its pieta online photo caption: “A picture caption with an audio slide show on July 27 about an Israeli attack on a building in Tyre, Lebanon, imprecisely described the situation in the picture. 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.”***

My syndicated column today hammers home what I think is a crucial point missed in the MSM coverage of the Reuters scandal:

“What’s the big deal over a little faked smoke?” That seems to be the prevailing attitude among media pooh-bahs irked by bloggers who exposed the crude Photoshoppery of a Reuters photographer over the weekend. The cameraman, prolific Lebanese stringer Adnan Hajj and chronicler of Hizballah, was fired.

But the black cloud of truth-distorting photo fakery, jihadi-sympathizing news staging, and sloppy photo captioning in the Middle East hangs over American journalism thicker than anything Hajj could conjure.

And I filed the column before posting on the latest doubts raised about the NYTimes’ pieta, the US News/Time magazine smelly garbage dump photos, and Reuters’ Issam Kobeisi. Pajamas round-up here. Dan Riehl points to video related to the burning garbage dump. As I write:

Whether from sloppiness, laziness, incompetence, or ideological bias, American journalists have played dupes or worse to jihadi propagandists for decades. Just a few weeks ago, a New York Times photography editor raved over her photographer Joao Silva’s image of an al-Sadr army sniper posing in a window firing at U.S. troops. “Incredible courage,” she panted. It’s not clear whether she was talking about the photographer or the terrorist.

The Associated Press has failed to respond to my repeated questions about one of its Iraqi stringers, Bilal Hussein, who was detained by the U.S. military in April after being captured in a Ramadi building with a cache of weapons, according to my sources. Hussein was part of a Pulitzer-winning AP photography team. From the fake “massacre” in Jenin, to the false accusations against Israel in the shooting of Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, to the dissemination of “Pallywood” terrorist video productions, to the false labeling of executed Shiite fishermen in a Haditha sports stadium as victims of U.S. Marines, the Reuterization of war journalism goes far beyond Reuters.

Reuters can kill a few pictures, but it does not kill persistent doubts about the American media’s ability to cover this war through anything but a distorted lens. The blogosphere can help clear the bogus smoke. Only the Old Media itself can stamp out the toxic fire.

Charles Johnson responds to WaPo coverage. NYT covers here. USA Today here. Ynetnews covers blogger scrutiny of AP fauxtography. Alexandra at Newsbusters weighs in on Dead Man Walking.

Will the MSM continue to cover the barely-unfolding story the way it flogged, say, Plamegate to death? I’m thinking not.

***
Previous:

“Fauxtography” alert: NYTimes and USNews; plus Time and Reuters’ Issam Kobeisi
“Fauxtography:” It’s all in the framing
Not so fast, Reuters
Breaking: Reuters withdraws all Hajj photos; second photo doctoring confirmed
Reuters: The clone-stamp news service
A smoke-clearing blogswarm
Reutergate: Picture kill
Where there’s smoke, there’s Photoshop?
Hot Air: The worst photoshop I’ve ever seen

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