Rick Moran exposes my secret identity as a Hizbullah Islamoblogofascist operative:
Brad at Sadly, No! takes exactly the right attitude – for a Hizbullah toady. He condemns the offending photo as “unethical� and then adds the Hiz Spin:
Now, while I think it’s unethical for Reuters to photoshop any picture it runs, I have to ask… is there really that much of a difference between the two that justifies the wingnutosphere’s scream fest? I mean, to me it looks like the photographer mostly darkened the smoke in the picture so it’d look better in black-and-white. I can’t believe this is the best the wingnutosphere can come up with nowadays.
Moral blindness personified. It isn’t a question about whether there is little difference between the two pictures, the fact is that the doctored photo was done to elicit a greater emotional response from the reader.
Well, I didn’t receive my talking points from Hassan Nasrallah this morning (although I am, as you know, on the Terrorhouse e-mail list), so I’ll have to respond to this without input from my Masters in Lebanon. Let’s roll tape, shall we?
Here’s Exhibit A. It’s a photograph of Beirut after an IAF bombing run. As you can see, there’s just a teensy-weensy bit of smoking coming from the buildings, most likely resulting from an all-night steak’n’falafel bbq.
Here’s Exhibit B, the Evil Photoshopped version of Exhibit A. It generates a greater emotional response from the reader because the smoke is black, which is a very scary color. Also, there is slightly more smoke toward the top, which implies that the Israeli airforce bombed a cigar shop, in clear violation of the Tobacco Products Rights Treaty of 1972.
So there you have it. The first picture looks like sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and everything that’s wonderful when we’re together. The second picture looks like a black smoke death cloud of black smoky black DEATH.
To be slightly more serious about this: the photographer obviously deserved to get fired for what he did. Altering a picture in any way, shape or form is a major no-no for any professional photographer, and Reuters obviously needs to do a much better job of screening the pictures it runs.
However, the broader point is this: I fail to see how slightly darker smoke so drastically changes the context of the original picture as to justify the all-too-typical “MSM ARE TRAITORS!!11!” freak-out. When I look at the original, my first thought is, “Gee, that doesn’t look like a fun place to be in.” When I look at the photoshopped one, I think, “Gee, that doesn’t look like a fun place to be in. Plus, there’s black smoke.” If the photographer was really trying to ellicit a greater emotional response simply by adding a little extra smoke, he clearly did a piss-poor job of it.
Also, I’d like to respond to this:
This is the essence of propaganda which makes ‘ole Brad a truly useful idiot of Hizbullah. Even when presented with incontrovertible evidence he’s being taken for a fool, he goes right on acting and thinking foolishly.
Fair enough: the next time the Hizbullah-controlled Reuters prints a picture of smoke billowing out of Beirut, I’ll assume the smoke is of a slightly lighter hue in real life. I don’t want to be a fool or anything.
UPDATE: plover has an interesting theory about the unaltered picture that I hadn’t considered:
The original picture is probably no more smoke than you’d expect to see coming out of a hopping cigar club. It’s just Nasrallah & co celebrating their propaganda victories with a few Islamocommie Cuban stogies.
Heh. Indeed.
