Recognition for bloggers on photo fraud

The NY Times has a fair story about blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and the exposure of the fake smoke in the Reuters photo.

As of yesterday afternoon, Adnan Hajj was the most-searched term on the Technorati Web site, which tracks what is being discussed in the blogosphere. And a rendering of his work was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.

Mr. Hajj, a Lebanese photographer based in the Middle East, may not be familiar to many newspaper readers. But thanks to the swift justice of the Internet, he has been charged, tried and convicted of improperly altering photographs he took for Reuters. The pictures ran on the Reuters news service on Saturday, and were discovered almost instantly by bloggers to have been manipulated. Reuters then announced on Sunday that it had fired the freelancer. Executives said yesterday that they were still investigating why they had not discovered the manipulation before the pictures were disseminated to newspapers.

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The story does not examine some of the other controversial images from the war and the issue of stageing certain scenes. It is something that the blogs have also raised questions about and the NY Times should look at that issue too. The smoke picture was a pretty easy case to make, but they should look at the manipulation of all pictures from Lebanon. Once the integrity has been shown wanting they are all at issue.

The Washington Post also notes Johnson's coup.

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Little Green Football's "Reutersgate" and "Rathergate" scalps share a key characteristic: They stem from Johnson's skepticism of, if not outright hostility toward, the mainstream news media (or as some Little Green Football visitors like to refer to them when they post comments, "the lamestream media").

In Johnson's view, the news media haven't adequately sounded the alarm about threats to Western societies posed by radical Islamic groups -- something he says he seeks to redress through his politically conservative blog.

"My main take is that political correctness has kept a lot of the hard truth from being spread by the mainstream media," says Johnson, 53, a professional musician in Los Angeles who spends most of his time maintaining his blog.

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The CAIR point of view is also expressed on behalf of the RoP (Religion of Peace).

Update: The BBC also looks at war blogging including the discovery of media fraud. It also refers to some of the Israeli and Lebanese bloggers who have reported on the war.