ADNAN HAJJ DOES IT AGAIN

I think that Reuters photographer/ really bad photoshopper Adnan Hajj should be called "the doctor," because of his photo doctoring.

Little Green Footballs links to The Jawa Report's analysis of the latest Hajj creation to be discovered.

Rusty Shackleford writes that Hajj doctored another photo. Rusty points out that the picture of the "Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational."

Original photo and caption--


An Israeli F-16 warplane fires missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, August 2, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj(LEBANON)

He explains that the plane isn't firing missiles. Instead, it's "dropping chaffe or flares designed to be a decoy for surface to air missiles." A closer look at what Hajj says are missiles shows that just one flare has been dropped and the others are copies of the original.

Clemente, one of Rusty's readers, presents this photo to illustrate the fakery:



Just by looking at a photo, I wouldn't be able to tell what was being fired or dropped or whatever.

I just go by the captions, and I expect the captions to be accurate descriptions of the photos.

That's not what Reuters offers.

When viewing a Reuters photo, one has to question if the caption is correct and if the photo has been manipulated.

"Doctor" Hajj has been fired by Reuters.

On ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News, a report from Reuters:

Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut.

The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news websites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shiite Islamic group Hezbollah, now in its fourth week.

ABC News Online did publish the manipulated picture but has since replaced it with the unaltered image.

Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke.

Reuters says it has strict standards of accuracy that bar the manipulation of images in ways that mislead the viewer.

"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

How lame!

Those are absolutely ridiculous excuses.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," she said in a statement issued in London.

Mr Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff freelance, or contributing photographer, from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.

Hajj has had a long association with Reuters. I wonder how many other photos used by Reuters over the years were Hajj alterations.

Is this a recent development, a new hobby that he picked up, or an old habit?