7. august 2006

Reuters kills all Hajj photographs, Lebanese 'massacre' toll reduced from 40 to 1 Reuters has now withdrawn the entire catalogue of Adnan Hajj's photographs after a second picture was revealed to be doctored. Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work. In addition to the smoke over Beirut picture discussed earlier, Hajj had also manipulated a picture of an Israeli F-16 dropping chaff or flares to multiply them, and the text accompanying the picture misleadingly said the plane fired missiles, instead of defensive anti-missile flares. It is probably the biggest "picture kill" in press history. Let's call it a picture massacre. It is not the only correction issued today. The world press earlier today wrote about a "massacre" of 40 civilians in Houla. In fact, one person had been killed. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday that one person was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Houla, not 40 as he had earlier reported. "The massacre in Houla, it turned out that there was one person killed," Siniora said. "They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people ... thank God they have been saved." Siniora had earlier told Arab foreign ministers in Beirut that the attack "was a horrific massacre ... in which more than 40 martyrs were victims of deliberate bombing." At least Siniora is issuing corrections. But most of the audience worldwide only read the initial reports. 8:05:35 PM    comment []  trackback []

WWW at 15 years Fifteen years ago yesterday, August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee posted an overview of a new technology to the Usenet discussion group alt.hypertext. The project was, maybe optimistically at the time, named WorldWideWeb. In hindsight, I guess we can agree the project has been reasonably successful. 2:21:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

Mel Gibson criticised for recanting Mel Gibson displeased all decent people with his relapse into alcohol abuse and subsequent anti-Semtic outburst. His apology, while far from satisfying everybody, has been accepted by the ADL. The hardcore anti-Semites, however, are not happy. To spare the rest of us, Orac ventures into the dark corners of the net to find out how the neo-nazis respond to Mel's mea culpa. It is not pretty. 1:19:12 PM    comment []  trackback []

Sacrifice a dove for or against Castro Depending on who you ask, Fidel Castro is either successfully recovering from surgery or about to die from stomach cancer. Some, however, are not leaving it at that. Among the followers of the religion Santeria Castro has both enemies and followers, and that is bad news for doves. The bird has reason to be nervous, because the illness of Cuban leader Fidel Castro has moved adherents of Santeria to appeal for divine help in hastening either Castro's demise or his recovery, depending on which side of the Florida Straits they live. Santeria is the voodooish Afro-Cuban religion that uses animal sacrifice to communicate with the gods, which makes these tough times for favorite sacrificial creatures such as chickens, goats and, in this case, doves. As many as 3 million people in Cuba and 60,000 people in Florida are believed to be involved in Santeria, according to religious experts. Quite a few of them are running off to the pet shops to buy doves as sacrificial animals to hasten the demise or the recovery of the old dictator. 12:13:16 PM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2006; 04:59:18.