Common sense at Harry's Place?

Surely not? Of course it was in the comments section, but still a refreshing change.

OK reality check, guys. First, here's a fact. You won't like it but it's still a fact. ALMOST EVERY PHOTO YOU SEE IN THE MEDIA HAS BEEN PHOTOSHOPPED TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. This is simply a by product of the digital era. It's simply much easier to use a digicam nowadays, and then the obvious way to 'chop' the photo and make it publishable is using photoshop (or similar). You don't actually seriously think those models actually look that thin? Likewise, crow's feet, ahem, laughter lines...all gone! With 'outdoor' shots the same principle applies: the temptation to lighten up a dark photo or darken an overly light one, or slightly change the colour saturation or whatever is simply overwhelming and almost everyone gives into it.

So what do we conclude from this? That most photos exist in a number of versions, and that, therefore , mistakes are easy to make. It's easy to be fiddling around and add some smoke (or whatever) for your own amusement, or by mistake, or to check something and then 'click'...the wrong pic is attached and sent to your editor. Remember, unlike any of you, photographers are immensely stressed, under fire (literally), short of sleep and food. Mistakes are very easy to make.

Think about it: if this is a fake it is immensely stupid because it's so easily spotted, and also because so what? Hands up: who had even seen this photo before LGF etc. started to highlight it? I had neither seen nor heard of it, and i've been following the invasion closely. This was not in any sense an emblamatic or famous pic.

And in any case, what propaganda value does it have? Do you think people might flock to the Hizbollah cause because Beirut looks smoky? If you wanted to fake a pic for propaganda purposes, you would fake dead maimed babies, weeping women, anninhilated buildings. Or you would fake Hizbollah successes against the IDF. You wouldn't waste your time making Beirut look more smoky (especially since genuine pics of the anninhilation of large chunks of Lebanon is so much more shocking).

As for the Qana pics: NO. The implication was NOT that 'some pics at Qana' were faked. The implication (as you all know, although of course some of you are lying and pretending otherwise) is not about the pics: the implication is that Qana ITSELF was faked. Again, you all know this.

To quote Instapundit:

'A number of y'all have emailed me (and I presume the other guest bloggers) about the various claims THAT QANA WAS A HOAX, based either on the time stamps on the rescue photos, or the fact that the building seems to have fallen down hours after the airstrike.

As I wrote to several people, having spent a year working at Ground Zero, I have a very high level of scepticism about these sorts of conspiracy theories. The photo conspiracy seems to be based on the ignorance of how wire services work; its author has confused the dateline, which indicates when the wire service loaded the photos into their system, with a digital timestamp. And the claims that the building couldn't have collapsed after so much time sound remarkably like the WTC Building 7 conspiracy theories, which were based on the fact that 7WTC, the farthest from the twin towers, inexplicably collapsed nine hours after the planes hit, even though it suffered no apparent structural damage.

In the "fog of war" all sorts of rumors get started--remember how tens of thousands were thought killed in the WTC, or the various reports of impending terror attacks in the days that followed? And when something bad happens, it's normal to look for reasons it's not your fault, especially if it was an accident. But I need a pretty high standard of evidence to accuse the victims of a tragedy of staging it to make us look bad. Meanwhile, it's not exactly helpful that many of the people arguing against the conspiracy theories are making remarks that sound like borderline anti-semitism, trending into grand Zionist conspiracy theories.

I've never managed to convince anyone of anything on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and perhaps it's impossible (though perhaps I'm just a lacklustre debater). But I think there are helpful and less helpful ways to express the deep rifts that divide us, and looking for grand plots in the chaos strikes me as among the least productive.'

Whereas Israeli strikes on civilian targets are invariably described as 'mistakes', when someone sends in the wrong photo this is proof, at HP, that there is a huge conspiracy by the Arabs, who control the media. They control everything. They control Reuters, the BBC, CNN. Their secret hand controls the horizontal, controls the vertical. This is straightforward 'the Jews control the media', with 'Arabs' substituted for 'Jews'. It is paranoid, BLATANTLY racist gibberish and you should be ashamed of yourselves for propagating it.

(NB: not that Reuters should have used the pic, but I'm willing to bet that the internal investigation will show that this was just a mistake. By that time, of course, you will all be chasing some other conspiracy theory).
Posted by Brendan at August 6, 2006 05:20 PM

Source: Harry's Place