One of the most ominous developments of the current war has been the introduction of fauxtography, the massive faking of photographic "evidence" to support propaganda offensives. Historians, particularly we who work in the Soviet area have long been familiar with the practice of airbrushing out of photos revolutionary leaders fallen out of favor and replacing them with someone more appropriate. Trotsky is erased and replaced by Stalin or Molotov at Lenin's elbow. But the old work was never so skilled as current efforts. In response a number of skilled photoshopists have risen to the challenge debunking many falsified efforts. In one recent case, a news agency withdrew 950 photos because the photographer's bonafides had been discredited.

But what about the photo which has not actually been doctored, but instead was staged or presented out of context?  There was a particularly nasty example of this which occurred about a month ago.

Among the "uncountable Israeli atrocities", there was a report of a clearly marked Red Cross ambulance deliberately targeted and destroyed by an Israeli aircraft. This report ran in most of the major print and television news sources.  I shrugged it off, assuming that this incident could very well have been real. After all, at about the same time were were other reports and films establishing that Hezbollah was using ambulances to transport its guerrillas. So it seemed as if this latest incident might well have been a justified attack.

But no, it was even less than that. It was not even real. Once i saw the photo, certain problems leaped out at me. it seems the ambulance was photographed with a hole in the roof, completely dead center of the red cross, and nicely round. The hole was obviously made by no plausible warhead, neither high explosive nor shaped charge. Now the story line has begun to unravel. on Wednesday Little Green Footballs alerted us all that the ambulance incident had been examined at Zombietime

Not only does Zombie give us an excellent lesson on how to examine a photo, and to contrast it with similar photos, he also debunks this latest blood libel and further impeaches the credibility of all those providing us with something pretending to be news. Maybe those Israeli atrocities are uncountable because they're all faked.

A tip of the helmet to Eric Bogomolny

-Rurik

Contributed by George Mellinger on August 25, 2006 at 05:19 PM in Eric Bogomolny, George Mellinger, Islamism Delenda Est, Israel, Lebanon | Permalink

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