Reuters Admits Altering Beirut Photo

[Annie]

http://theshapeofdays.com/2006/08/a_photojournalist_weighs_in_on_the_adnan.html

A photojournalist weighs in on the Adnan Hajj scandal

Okay, we all know the facts by now. Adnan Hajj, ex-photojournalist for Reuters, manipulated at least some of his photographs before submitting them to the wire service. Hajj has been fired, and all of his photos have been removed from the Reuters archive pending an investigation.

(The “investigation,” in this case, may involve Reuters dumping 920 photographs with Hajj’s name on them into a deep hole, paving over the top and getting on with their lives.)

So now we know the what. We know what happened — Adnan Hajj faked at least two photos and submitted them to Reuters. We will probably never know why. (Though some folks think it was all just a big conspiracy.)

That leaves how. How did this happen?

This morning I was able to interview a freelance photographer who works for the Associated Press and other news organizations, and I learned a lot about how this whole business works.

Diane Bondareff was the Official Photographer to the Mayor of New York City during the administration of Rudy Giuliani. Today she shoots for the AP, Bloomberg, The New York Times and other organizations. As a freelancer, she shoots just about anything photo-worthy: politics, business news, entertainment, features. Living in New York City, Diane has covered the United Nations and the attacks of September 11.

I asked her today about the logistics of being a freelance photographer for a wire service. For example, who decides what she shoots?

“The majority of my work for the AP is on assignment,” Diane said. “Occasionally I find a story that interests me on my own and will offer the photos ‘on spec’ to the AP and then I only get paid if they accept the photos for the wire.” But, she said, “mostly, a photo assignment editor at the New York metro bureau tells me what to shoot.”

I asked Diane who writes the captions for her photos, whether she writes them herself or they’re written by an editor at the bureau. I was surprised — but, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been — to learn that the answer is both. “My caption is basically who, what, where and when,” she said, “and I keep the caption as generic as possible.” If there’s relevant information beyond what Diane provides, she said an editor will expand the caption.

For example, her caption might read, “Traders work on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2006, in New York.” The bureau business editor might add, “Crude oil and gasoline prices rose sharply Wednesday after a government report showed that U.S. crude and gasoline inventories fell last week, and as a tropical storm gained strength in the Caribbean.”

In other words, the photographer documents the facts of the picture in the caption, while the editor adds context.

I next asked Diane what kind of post-processing she does to her photos, whether she uses Photoshop at all, and if so to what extent.

In short, Diane said, she will “only adjust what can be done easily in a darkroom to a film negative — lightness, contrast, dust and cropping.” She said that she will use Photoshop tools to remove dust and scratches from her photographs — even in the age of shooting digital, dust and scratches can still creep into photographs.

She also said that she’ll use Photoshop’s “unsharp mask” operation to improve the focus of a soft photo, “but maybe some other shooters wouldn’t even do that.”

The professional standards for photojournalists, therefore, are very restrictive. Photos can be cropped, but they may not be airbrushed except to remove small camera artifacts, and even then only if doing so doesn’t change the content of the photo. The brightness and contrast of a photo can be changed, just as a photographer could adjust the exposure of a negative during processing, but there are strict limits. For instance, a photographer for the Charlotte Observer was fired recently for drastically adjusting the exposure of one of his photographs. And in that case, the adjustment didn’t even change the content of the photo, just the color of the sky.

Diane freely acknowledged that typographical errors and other minor mistakes can creep into photo captions. As someone who has worked for a newspaper, I can attest that errors like that are inevitable, and generally harmless. “But,” Diane said, “I prefer to think that an AP editor would catch such a blatant PhotoShop re-touch as Adnan Hajj did on his photo.”

“Covering a war zone is much harder than covering entertainment events in New York,” Diane said, “but that doesn’t excuse manipulating a photo to make it seem better or more dramatic to the shooter.”

So now I know a heck of a lot more about how freelance photojournalism works. But I don’t have any more answers than when I started. I still don’t have any idea whether one or more photo editors at Reuters were complicit in Hajj’s attempted frauds, or whether they were just incompetent at their jobs, or whether the process itself failed somehow.

What I do know is that Reuters’ standards of journalistic integrity are now seriously in doubt. Whether they will stay in doubt depends entirely on what Reuters does from now on. If we continue to see photos that are obviously staged or that run with false or misleading captions, for example, we’ll know that the problems at Reuters run far deeper than one troubled photojournalist.

One thing is certain: We will all be watching.

Naturally, there’s one other piece to this puzzle, one that I hesitate to mention because it’s circumstantial at best, and maybe even downright wrong. But I think it’s interesting, so I present it for my readers to make up their own minds.

In 2004, Reuters opened an office in Bangalore, India, staffed with 20 Indian journalists covering “2,000 small to medium-sized American companies” and a team of six editors.

“Reuters admits costs are 60 per cent less in Bangalore than its ‘onshore’ centres in New York, Britain and Singapore,” wrote Randeep Ramesh of The Hindu.

“This is just the beginning for Reuters in Bangalore. The company’s data unit, which archives material for 30,000 global firms, already employs 300 people and will grow by another 300 next year.”

“The average age in the office is 25.”

In the words of one reader, “You get what you pay for.”

 

[Hobbit]

I laughed when I saw the photo. I know ametuers who could fake a better one in five minutes. Then, there's another thing I find puzzling. If you're going to risk your career by painting a false picture, then why make that picture one that makes Lebanon look more dangerous? Isn't that a little redundant? That's like photoshopping bigger boobs on Dolly Parton or a bigger butt on Jennifer Lopez.

 

[Mr.Conley]

I laughed when I saw the photo. I know ametuers who could fake a better one in five minutes. Then, there's another thing I find puzzling. If you're going to risk your career by painting a false picture, then why make that picture one that makes Lebanon look more dangerous? Isn't that a little redundant? That's like photoshopping bigger boobs on Dolly Parton or a bigger butt on Jennifer Lopez.

My sentiment exactly.

 

[Annie]

NYTimes photographer, US News & World Report cover photo. It just keeps getting worse. Links and videos, including a photo presentation from NY Times at site:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005687.htm

 

[Annie]

Weird gets weirder,

Is Hajj still at Reuters, under another name?


http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184242.php

Pics at site. If they are one in the same, Reuters is in BIG trouble:

August 08, 2006
Is Adnan Hajj Two People?

Does Adnan Hajj have a second identity? A Rusty Shackleford to his Dale Gribble, if you will? UPDATE: Hajj may still be employed by Reuters! Scroll down. Note: This is evidence, not proof. But it seems like enough evidence to demand answers from Reuters.

Here is a Reuters photo by Adnan Hajj, dated July 23:


A Lebanese woman cries as she carries belongings from her home which was hit by an Israeli air strike in south Beirut July 23, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj (LEBANON)

Here is a Reuters photo from the same day by Issam Kobeisi. Seems kinda similar.


A Lebanese woman cries as she carries belongings she founded in the wreckage of her home that was targeted by the Israeli air strikes,in southern Beirut July 23, 2006. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisi (LEBANON)

Who is Issam Kobeisi? Does this one look familiar?


A Lebanese woman wails after looking at the wreckage of her apartment, in a building, that was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut July 22, 2006. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisi

Is it possible that Reuters is sending two checks to Adnan Hajj? That his crimes go deeper than simple doctoring of photos? Are the editors at Reuters that lazy that they didn't notice that one of Hajj's photos is identical to that of Issam Kobeisi?

Or is this just a mislabelled photo attributed to the wrong journalist?

For what it's worth, Reuters has not used a single photo by "Issam Kobeisi" since Adnan Hajj was fired. UPATE: Looks like there are various ways to spell his name. Also spelled Issam Kobeisy.......and still working for Reuters.

Hat tip to Mrs Abe Froman who found the photos.

And just to clarify, this is not a slam dunk case. We're in the investigation stage still.

UPDATE: Variations on a theme? Way more evidence & updates below.

All of Hajj's photos have been taken off of Yahoo News. But Dan Riehl has this photo and caption attributed to Hajj. I've reduced the quality some to save on bandwidth, but Dan has the original.

hajj_photo_man_leaving_apartment.jpg
A Lebanese man carries belongings he found in the wreckage of his home after it was targeted by the Israeli air strikes, in southern Beirut July 23,2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)

Notice both the theme of the photo and the caption, this time by "Issam Kobeisi".


A Lebanese carries his belongings after his apartment was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut July 22, 2006. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisi(LEBANON)

If you look through Kobeisi's photos, you find that they are very similar to Hajj's.

Of course, it's possible that this is nothing. That Reuters just attributed the photo to the wrong guy.

But, then again, why would a guy who has no problem photoshopping "missiles" into his pics have a problem with trying to collect two checks from Reuters?

Reuters admitted that the way photos were submitted from Beirut was pretty lax and, in response to the Hajj scandal, have changed their editorial process.

Filing drills have been tightened in Lebanon and only senior staff will now edit pictures from the Middle East on the Global Pictures Desk, with the final check undertaken by the Editor-in-Charge, Reuters said.

I hope I'm wrong.

UPDATE II: Okay, now tell me this is a coincidence.

Adnan Hajj photo:

Issam Kobeisi photo:


A Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla looks at a fire in a Beirut suburb, July 17,2006. (Issam Kobeisi/Reuters)

UPDATE III: Okay, this is just ridiculous. Here are a series of Hajj and Kobeisi/Kobeisy photos lined up in a row. Drinking from Home notes that they are all photos from two Reuters photographers. Just scroll down and note who took each photo.

UPDATE IV: Another interesting thing. While I found a fairly large Google trace of Adnan Hajj when I first began to investigate him, there is no Google trace of Issam Kobeisi/Kobeisy before mid July of this year. The date of the first Hajj photoshop? July 26.

In addition to being a stringer for Reuters, Hajj is also an editor at as Safir. Why is that important?

We know that as Safir is an openly anti-Israel Arabic news outlet in Lebanon. Right Winged has this excellent expose of them here.

The entire website is very similar to the dozens of Islamist websites that I visit. The main theme of these websites is almost always that Muslims are victims of some outside force. They use images of dead women and children to reinforce this, always blaming the outsider for their predicament. This "news" website is no different.

On a hunch, I found this story, which is the top story of the day. The photo caption says it is of a "Civil Defense worker taking the body of a dead child out of the collapsed al Shia building."

reuters_dead_girl.JPEG

The photo is attributed to Reuters. No journalist is attributed.

But look at this photo of the same "civil defense worker" and this one.

Photographer: Issam Kobeisy

A photograph by "Issam Kobeisy" being published by a news agency where Adnan Hajj happens to be an editor. Coincidence?

But if that wasn't bad enough, check out the time stamp on the two Reuters photos attributed to Kobeisy. The same guy pulling out the same body.

First photo: Aug 08 6:37 AM
Second photo: Aug 08 6:55 AM

18 minutes. With the same body. On top of the same pile of rubble. Think about it.

More on the related and sitll developing scandals here.

Another update: And speaking of parading the bodies of dead children around.

More wailing women photos linked to "Kobeisy/Kobeisi" here and here.
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Posted by Dr. Rusty Shackleford at August 8, 2006 06:45 PM