2006 Lebanon War photographs controversies

The 2006 Lebanon War photographs controversies refers to several instances of photojournalism from the 2006 Lebanon War that misrepresented or allegedly misrepresented, scenes of death and destruction in Lebanon caused by Israeli air attacks. As a result of the scandal, Reuters fired one freelance photographer and the AP disciplined several others.

The controversy began as an investigation of documents by individual bloggers, and spread to print and television media sources. It led to the Reuters news organization firing freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, and implementing stricter controls on its photo-gathering process.

Four types of misleading photojournalism have been alleged as part of the controversy: photo manipulation using computer software, photo staging by press photographers, photo staging by others at the scene, and false or misleading captioning of unstaged photos. The media watchdog group CAMERA says that the distortions reflect a bias in favor of Hezbollah and against Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.

Photo manipulation

Main article: Adnan Hajj photographs controversy

One of Adnan Hajj's altered photos.

Adnan Hajj, a freelance photographer, was fired by Reuters after he admitted using Photoshop to add and darken smoke spirals in photographs of Beirut, in order to make the damage appear worse. Reuters stated that Hajj had edited another photo, and critics raised further questions about Hajj's work. Reuters announced that they had withdrawn "all of Hajj's photos, about 920 images, from its archives".

Allegations of staging by press photographers

A photo of a burning Qur'an amid a pile of rubble, also taken by Hajj, seemed suspicious to Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten, since the building it was in had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike hours beforehand, and everything else in the photo was already ash. A number of photographs were taken from Lebanon showing a children's toy in the foreground, surrounded by a pile of rubble. Rutten also wrote about this set, saying that "Reuters might want to check its freelancers' expenses for unexplained Toys R Us purchases."

Similarly, the CAMERA questioned the authenticity of seemingly pristine photographs and photo albums lying on the top of the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli missiles, asking "how often does one find intact photographs sitting alone and undisturbed on top of the ruins of a building levelled by a missile? But coincidentally or not, photographers from various news organizations have been finding just that in rubble all over Lebanon "... "with the only common denominator that all purport to depict Israel's destruction of Lebanese civilian life"

Allegations of photo staging by others

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Salam Daher, wearing green helmet, carrying a dead child

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Salam Daher directing a cameraman after removing the dead child's body from the ambulance

Many allegations of staging by those other than press photographers focused on Salam Daher, the head of the South Lebanon civil defense organisation, who was shown holding up a dead girl's body in many press photos taken at the scene of the 2006 Qana airstrike. Prior to his identity being established by the media, he was dubbed "Green Helmet" or the "Green Helmet Guy" after the protective headgear that he was shown wearing. Some commentators accused him of being a Hezbollah operative who was manipulating press coverage to create anti-Israel sympathy and argued that he seemed to be posing for photos for a longer period of time than a legitimate rescue worker would. A German television station, NDR, in a program called "Zapp", subsequently argued that Daher had been directing the filming of the rescue effort (giving instructions to the cameraman to keep filming and removing a boy's body that was already put in an ambulance, in order to take more pictures of it), and called him a "cynical movie director."

Later, the Associated Press published a profile on Daher in which he denied the Hezbollah allegations, stating, "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life." Daher stated that he has shown the photographers dead children to show who the airstrikes were killing, saying, "I wanted people to see who was dying. They said they were killing fighters. They killed children."

On August 8, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper reported about a Hezbollah press tour of a bombed-out area in southern Beirut on 23 July 2006, during which Hezbollah operatives asked a group of empty ambulances to switch on their sirens and flashing lights for the benefit of the waiting press photographers, to give the impression that they were responding to casualties. Senior Producer Charlie Moore described the same tour as a "dog-and-pony show".

Ambulance controversy

After the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement saying that "two of its ambulances were struck by [Israeli] munitions, although both vehicles were clearly marked" on 23 July 2006, wounding nine people, the Associated Press reported that "Israeli jets blasted two ambulances with rockets" according to "Ali Deebe, a Red Cross spokesman in Tyre". The story quickly spread to many other news outlets around the world. The Boston Globe quoted Kasim Shaalan as saying "A big fire came toward me, like in a dream" after a "rocket or missile had made a direct hit through the roof"..

A controversy developed when 'zombie', the pseudonymous owner of the zombietime website, posted a long essay arguing (among other things) that the damage to the ambulances was far too light for a missile strike. Zombie said that the ambulances were rusted out in the photographs, that explosive damage would not have left a rusted out shell, and that the photos showed no blast damage but instead a perfectly round hole that coincided precisely with where the revolving light would be. This was picked up by the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who said on August 28, "after closer study of the images of the damage to the ambulance, it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax," a conclusion he later said he drew from initial reports. On August 30, the ICRC "rebuked" Foreign Minister Alexander Downer "for relying on an unverified internet blog" and said that "there was no evidence to support" the hoax claim.

Martin Chulov, a reporter for The Australian subsequently wrote of visiting Tyre and inspecting both ambulances on 24 July 2006 and (wrongly) described Downer's source as "a right-wing Florida-based website, zombietime.com ... a blog". Andrew Bolt, a conservative Australian columnist who had written a column arguing that media photographs contradicted the ICRC's claims and that reporters were "passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists", defended Downer, and noted that later reports claiming that the ambulances were hit by small arms fire contradicted the original reports. He also published an unnamed military source's report that "there is no weapon that would deliver terminal effects consistent with the pictures, the alleged story and the reputed damage done to ambulance and people."

In December of 2006, Human Rights Watch released a report on forensic investigations they conducted in Qana. The group concluded:

...there was no "hoax." All of the available evidence shows that the Israeli attack which hit the Qana ambulances took place as reported. Many of the earlier reports on the incident have minor inconsistencies that should be corrected....Sloppy and sometimes exaggerated reporting in the news media contributed to some of the confusion....None of these minor errors, however, justifies Zombietime’s armchair conjectures of an elaborate Hezbollah hoax. The basic truth remains, however desperately some commentators have tried to deny it: an Israeli attack hit two clearly marked ambulances on the night of July 23. The Zombietime website itself acknowledged that, "if true," the attack constitutes "an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention[s]."

Human Rights Watch "originally reported that the ambulances had been struck by missiles fired from an Israeli airplane, but that conclusion was incorrect". The December 2006 report corrected that point, speculating that the ambulances were hit by a "smaller type of missile", possibly a "SPIKE anti-armor missile" or "the still experimental DIME (dense inert metal explosive) missile." Both missiles have an extremely small blast radius, with DIME being specifically designed to avoid collateral damage when used in urban areas.

In response, 'Zombie' posted a rebuttal on his website saying that SPIKE and DIME missiles both would have completely obliterated a target as small as an ambulance and concluded "Human Rights Watch's new report failed to make its case."

Allegations of improper captioning

Photographs submitted to Reuters and Associated Press showed a Lebanese woman mourning in front of destroyed buildings, said to be her home, on two different pictures taken by two photographers, published and captioned two weeks apart, which BBC editors replaced on their website after comments pointing to the inconsistency.

The New York Times improperly captioned a photo taken in the city of Tyre in its online edition; an injured rescue worker being lifted from the rubble was implied to have been a bombing victim when in fact the worker had slipped and fallen. The newspaper subsequently issued a correction, saying that the photo had appeared in the printed edition with the correct caption.

Bruno Stevens photos

A set of photos taken by press photographer Bruno Stevens show a Lebanese gunman with a raging fire in the background. One such photo appeared on the cover of the July 31 issue of U.S. News & World Report, with the inside caption, "Hezbollah guerilla poses at the site of an Israeli attack near Beirut". Another one was published in the July 31 issue of Time, with a caption saying the fire came from the "wreckage of a downed Israeli jet." The photos' captioning quickly attracted controversy, with some commentators stating that the fire in the background appeared to be nothing more than a large pile of burning tires.

On November 11, 2006 Stevens, on the online forum "Lightstalkers", gave his explanation for the controversy. He wrote that he had originally given one of the photos the following caption:

"Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 An Israeli Air Force F16 has allegedly been shot down while bombing a group of Hezbollah owned trucks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher."

He wrote that sometime later, after having done more investigation, he had modified his caption to:

"Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 The Israeli Air Force bombed a group of Hezbollah chartered trucks parked on the back of large Lebanese Army barracks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher, at least one missile was hit, misfiring high into the sky before falling down and starting a huge fire in the barracks' parking lot."

In his post, he wrote that he had had no say in the magazines' captions. He also reaffirmed the validity of his second caption, stating that the fire did not come from a garbage dump and was indeed the result of an Israeli attack; though he considered the site "a very legitimate target for the Israeli Air Force."

See also

• Journalistic fraud
• Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Pallywood