New York Times 'used fraudulent photo'

A man who appeares to be playing dead in a New York Times photo essay entitled "attack in Tyre," is seen in other photographs in the same essay walking around and pointing.

Under the caption of the photo in question, the New York Times wrote: "The mayor of Tyre said that in the worst hit areas, bodies were still buried under the rubble, and he appealed to the Israelis to allow government authorities time to pull them out."

The blog notes that the same man can also be seen "again scrambling over debris in photo no. 3  and no. 4."

Since then, the New York Times has issued a correction, saying:  "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."

In other questions on media images, US commentator Michelle Malkin notes that the US News magazine's front cover picture of a Hizbullah gunman standing in front of a blaze, part of a piece entitled "Lebanon's new ruins," is actually a photograph taken near a garbage dump.

The photo was taken by former disgraced Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj.

"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?" Asked the blog. "Or is this just a mislabeled photo attributed to the wrong journalist?"

Reuters spokeswoman Yasmeen Kahn just e-mailed us a statement in response to questions we put to her earlier today. The bottomline: "Adnan Hajj and Issam Kobeisi are two photographers," Kahn said.

Jawa raised questions about why both men would have been at the same scene at least once in the past few weeks, and wondered whether the same person might have taken the photos. According to Kahn: "It is common practice to send more than one photographer to an incident."

Later, Reuters responded, with a spokesman telling the USA Today newsopaer that "a photo originally credited to Kobeisi had later been retransmitted under Hajj's name. 'The picture in question was sent out at 11.57 GMT on July 23rd with the caption and byline Issam Kobeisi. As the caption was correct, but there was a mistake with the byline, the picture was reissued with the caption and correct byline, Adnan Hajj, shortly afterwards.," the American newspaper reported.

Questions on Qana

Blogs in the US are continuing to ask questions about images from the Lebanese village of Qana. The Riehl World site has alleged that Hizbullah "added to the body count of dead children there."

"How do you introduce new bodies into the scene of a bomb strike? The answer may be as simple as you bring them from around the corner," the blog said, posting a number of photographs and videos to back up its assertion.

In one of the videos, Lebanese rescues workers are seen holding a stretcher with a body on it, putting it down as photographers took pictures, and then continuing onwards.

"All of these forms of fraud have the same intent: to serve as propaganda for Hizbullah, and to make the Israeli attacks look as brutal as possible," concluded the Zombie Time blog.

Meanwhile, reports have surfaced of Hizbullah members issuing death threats to journalists who attempt to film them firing rockets at Israel.

The NBC's Richard Engel told CNN: "At one time, when we were talking and having a conversation with this Hizbullah representative, he said, 'look, we’re serious, we will kill you if you film these outgoing rockets.”

A Time magazine employee also reported that "the Party of God (Hizbullah) has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”

Have you found a suspicious image or story in the news? Contact us: yaakov@y-i.co.il