Israel Matzav

Drinking From Home: Extreme Makeover - Beirut Edition

Drinking From Home: Extreme Makeover - Beirut Edition

Doctored photographs aren't just coming from Al-Reuters. Al-AP is doing the same thing. Click the link above to meet the unluckiest woman in Beirut - her 'house' was 'destroyed' on July 22 and again on August 5.

YNet notes:

After receiving "some emails" about the photos, the BBC removed the Associated Press image from its own website.

The Associated Press has so far not responded to requests by Ynetnews for an explanation of the mysterious time gap.

YNet finally comes out and says it: the media coverage in Lebanon is biased:

Meanwhile, sections of the foreign media are continuing to display uneven coverage of Israeli and Lebanese casualties of war and scenes of destruction.

A BBC photo display entitled "In pictures: Conflict impact," made up of eight images, uses six out of eight pictures to illustrate damages in Lebanon, but pays scant attention to the human toll and large-scale damage sustained in northern Israel.

The photographs show images of Lebanese civilians and bombed out buildings and Beirut, and carry captions such as: "A woman in Beirut cries amid the destruction."

After the BBC says fighting is hampering aid deliveries in southern Lebanon, an image of an Israeli soldier praying is shown, covering his ears while an IDF canon goes off in the background. "But ground clashes in the area continue unabated," the BBC wrote, suggesting through the image that the Israel bore most of the responsible for clashes. There are no photographs of Hizbullah rockets, or Hizbullah members firing rockets at Israel in the series.

Only the seventh photograph in the succession shows an image of an Israeli woman mourning at a funeral, with the caption "Israelis are also counting their losses."

The last picture in the series is of an Israeli in an air raid shelter, but the person in the photo is made black by shadows, and appears to be a silhouette of a human figure. The person's age, sex, or any human features are impossible to make out – an odd choice by the BBC considering the large number of available photographs of Israeli children and families in bomb shelters.

The BBC's website photo editor, Phil Commes, has also taken a neutral line on the faked photographs from Beirut supplied by Reuters, saying: "One man's color balancing is another man's grounds for dismissal."

Finally, because I need a little comic relief in all this, take a look at this picture, which is the August 5 picture of the lady in Beirut. Anyone else think she looks like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein? :-)

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:01 PM