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Fauxtography – Reuters Uses Photoshop

Wednesday's Example of Media Bias  —  Posted on June 9, 2010

Directions

-Read the excerpt below from Charles Johnson's June 6th report posted at LittleGreenFootballs.com.
-Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.

Question(s)

Photographer and image analyst David Katz gave his expert opinion on the photos:

"It is crystal clear that someone at Reuters has deliberately hidden key parts of the original images. What we do not know at this stage is, who at Reuters did this and more importantly why?"

Since being exposed, Reuters has uncropped the offending photographs. However, this still leaves questions over how this was allowed to happen. What do you think?

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.

Excerpt

NOTE:  Reuters [News Service] … [appears] to have cropped news photos to favor the image of Muslim flotilla attackers.  The photo Reuters published … show[s] one of the attackers without a knife. [The original photo], …includes the knife in the hand of the attacker…  The pictures show the attackers trying to take an [Israeli] IDF Navy commando hostage on the Mavi Mamara ship, which was stopped by the [Israeli] Navy from continuing on course to Hamas-controlled Gaza [last week].  The attackers’ use of a weapon in the clash is an important news item because the “peace activists” claimed they were unarmed. … (from israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137924)

 

One picture cropped to remove a knife might be explained as incompetence or a simple mistake.

But now we have two pictures from the “peace activists” that were cropped by someone at Reuters to remove knives in the hands of the activists, as they attempted to take soldiers hostage.

Reuters has published this picture from the activists:

The picture [above] is a cropped version of this photo [below] from the IHH website (IHH is the Islamist group whose members rioted aboard the Mavi Marmara):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What did the Reuters photo editor crop out? A big knife and a big pool of blood.  [Notice the two red squares ... added on the right side of the picture. One shows a knife in the hand of one of the terrorists and the bloody hand of an Israeli soldier. The one on the bottom right shows the blood of the soldier who was dragged to the ground after being stabbed. from yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2010/06/reuters-brings-fauxtography-to-gaza.html]

 

Read the original post at LittleGreenFootballs.com.

Read posts on the same story at:

  • HonestReporting.com
  • Yidwithlid.com
  • Israelnationalnews.com























Answer(s)

Opinion question. Answers vary.

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Identifying Media Bias

To accurately identify different types of bias, you should be aware of the issues of the day, and the liberal and conservative perspectives on each issue. (See our chart “Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs”)

Types of Media Bias:

Omission – leaving one side out of an article or a series of articles over a period of time... (read more)

Selection of Sources – including more sources that support one view over another... (read more)

Story Selection – a pattern of highlighting news stories that support one side of an issue over another... (read more)

Placement – the location in the paper or article where a story or event is printed; a pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of one side... (read more)

Labeling – comes in two forms: 1. Tagging of person from one party or group with extreme labels while leaving the other side unlabeled or with more mild labels. 2. A reporter not only fails to identify a liberal or conservative as such, but also describes the person or group with positive labels, such as “an expert” or “independent consumer group”... (read more)

Spin – occurs when the story has only one interpretation of an event or policy, to the exclusion of the other. Spin involves tone- a reporter’s subjective comments about objective facts... (read more)

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