New York – The Reuters news agency has been accused of removing images of activists wielding weapons and bloodied and wounded Israeli naval commandos from photographs taken on board a ship headed for Gaza during deadly clashes last week.
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Nine people were killed and dozens others, among them Israel Defense Forces soldiers, were hurt when the clashes erupted as IDF troops tried to board the Mavi Marmara ship in order to prevent it reaching its destination in Gaza.
The ship was one of six vessels that made up the “Freedom Flotilla,” a convoy carrying aid that set out from Turkey in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip. Five of the boats in the convoy were boarded by IDF troops without incident, while passengers on the sixth fought the troops as they came onboard. All six boats were towed by the Israel Navy to the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
Reuters on Monday rejected accusations of biased coverage, adding that it had reverted to the use of “the original set” of images, once the organization realized that the photographs it had published had been cropped.
A Reuters spokesman told Haaretz: “Reuters is committed to an accurate and impartial reporting. All images that pass over our wire follow a strict editorial evaluation and selection process.
“The images in question were made available in Istanbul in following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges. When we realized that the dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images Reuters immediately moved to the original set as well.”
This is not the first time that Reuters has been criticized for images that appear to be biased against Israel. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the news agency admitted that one of its pictures of destruction caused by Israel’s bombing of Beirut had been altered with a computer graphics program.
What else is new they did this b4 also
Now why would Reuters, a well respected news agency with ZERO bias whatsoever, after all they only REPORT news, do such a thing — AGAIN??????
They accomplished what they wanted. As they’ve done in the past, they released doctored photos, and after they set the public opinion, they apologize (albeit not as publicly as they had spread their original doctored photos)
I wish there was a way to sue them. Money talks.
FOX the only true news company – of course besides VIN
They did it in the past like 5 years ago
This action need “international investigation”
In other words, Reuters is guilty as charged.
I was a big fan of yours especially in finance but unfortunately I lost the trust, if you admit that you can’t verify and validate the stuff you put out. Sorry finito.
So Reuter’s crapped the photos. What else is news. Even in the reports condemning Israel dozens of “peace” activists can been seen wielding pipes or clubs and attacking the soldiers as soon as they came aboard. I’m surprised that none of the soldiers were killed.
In one respect, I think the current photo doctoring is more ominous in its import of sentiment at Reuters. The image from Lebanon added a column of black smoke, suggesting violence worse than was the fact, which would serve to sensationalize the story, hence serving Reuters’s self-interest. In the current instance, their editing served to eliminate elements, the combat knife, pool of blood, and hand of a second prone, beaten inspector, which would have afforded increased interest and attention to their story. Reuters sacrificed its own self-interest in order to facilitate the continued pretext that the floatilla consisted of peace-loving humanitarians.
Now wouldn’t it be biased for Reuters to show the weapon??? Just kidding they are a bunch of anti-Semites an to expect anything, but this would only lead to utter disappointment.
I remember about 10-15 years ago the New York Times had a picture which showed three Israeli soldiers and an Arab girl, and the caption said that the girl is running away from the Israeli soldiers who want to rape her. I called in to protest and probably many people called in to. Then a few days later the NYT had an unnoticeable correction that the caption wasn’t true.
A few years ago New York Newsday also showed a few pictures with false captions and they also ran a correction for it.
These things don’t just happen, they are designed to mislead. When caught they put on an innocent face and apologize like Helen Thomas did. Empty apologies are these; they apologize for getting caught, not for what they did. Why don’t they ever make a mistake portraying Israel better then they wanted to?
I was reading report in local paper, where it constantly refers to Israel as “The Jewish State” & does not mention Israel by name at all. I was wondering where they got this piece from – you guessed it – Reuters.
Did they print pictures of the deaths of the activists? Fair is fair.
They should get the Helen Thomas Award for Accurate Journalism
In one respect, I think the current photo doctoring is more ominous in its import of sentiment at Reuters. The image from Lebanon added a column of black smoke, suggesting violence worse than was the fact, which would serve to sensationalize the story, hence serving Reuters’s self-interest. In the current instance, their editing served to eliminate elements, the combat knife, pool of blood, and hand of a second prone, beaten inspector, which would have afforded increased interest and attention to their story. Reuters sacrificed its own self-interest in order to facilitate the continued pretext that the floatilla consisted of peace-loving humanitarians.