• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Reuters Admits Cropping Photos of Ship Clash, Denies Political Motive

jamesrage said:
Didn't Rueters do something similar before?


FOXNews.com - Reuters Admits Cropping Photos of Ship Clash, Denies Political Motive
Cropped%20Image-Reuters%201_doomsday_604x341.JPG
The British-based Reuters news agency has been stung for the second time by charges that it edited politically sensitive photos in a way that casts Israel in a bad light. But this time Reuters claims it wasn’t at fault.

The news agency reacted to questions raised by an American blogger who showed that Reuters' photo service edited out knives and blood traces from pictures taken aboard the activist ship Mavi Marmara during a clash with Israeli commandos last week. Nine people were killed and scores were injured in the clash.

The pictures of the fight were released by IHH, the Turkish-based group that sponsored the six-ship fleet that tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.

In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.

The blog “Little Green Footballs” challenged Reuters' editing of the photo.

“That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,” the blog stated.

In a second photo the unedited print issued by IHH showed blood along the ship's railing and a hand holding a knife as an Israeli soldier lies on the deck. Both the blood and the knife were missing in the photo that Reuters released.
Click to expand...

I have no doubt that weapons were in the hands of all parties . . . but that's a knife?

Does look like a knife to me - could be anything. Why should I believe a random blogger who claims it's a knife in this *one* picture?
 
Wiseone said:
I dont know if it was done intentionally or not but one question I do have to ask is how does including or excluding a knife mean they are trying to cast Israel in a bad light? A knife is a knife, there's nothing about the knife itself to suggest it was owned or used by either side. So looking at the picture I don't see anything that would conclusively tell me that knife was used by the ship's personnel or its an Israeli knife. So if it was the intention of Reuters going into this story to report it in a manner biased against Israel, cutting out a knife that could have come from anywhere doesn't really mean that much.

I couldn't see how someone looking at this picture and, even if they even noticed the knife, having a change of opinion either from pro-Israeli or neutral to anti-Israeli or doubting of Israel's story or even a weakening of their opinion of Israel or Israel's actions.
Click to expand...

I have to agree. There's no way to identify ownership of the knife, nor how or by whom it was used (it would seem logical that is WAS used, but we don't even know that for certain). And if the knife hadn't been pointed out, I probably wouldn't have noticed it anyway.

Beyond this, the image doesn't appear to have been doctored or 'shopped, merely cropped - which might have been done for any number of technical reasons. If Reuters was attempting to make some sort of point by cropping it out, I can't imagine what it could be, and said cropping certainly has no impact on my thoughts about the whole incident. Following this, if Reuters was attempting to make some sort of point by cropping it out, they should be asked to explain their reasoning. Again, it might be something as innocuous as bandwidth/technical issues.

The underlying point here is: NO ONE KNOWS. So all the tooth-gnashing over "what it means" (if it means anything) is pointless.
 
Last edited:
Am I missing something here, I see the knife in the had in the original photo, but what 'blood' are they talking about?

And why would Reuters (the news organization) want to portray the activists as less-violent. At what level in the news-delivery process was the decision to crop the photo made?
 
Considering that Reuters usually has a spotless record, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Reuters and say it was accidental. Frankly I wouldn't have seen the knife if someone hadn't pointed it out.

Honestly I dont see what Reuters would gain by intentionally cropping the image
 
Moderator's Warning:
This thread is not about Fox News and whether or not they crop out pictures. Now either get on the topic or points are going to start being given out for the constant derailing attempts
 
hazlnut said:
Am I missing something here, I see the knife in the had in the original photo, but what 'blood' are they talking about?

And why would Reuters (the news organization) want to portray the activists as less-violent. At what level in the news-delivery process was the decision to crop the photo made?
Click to expand...

Ahh, of course.... all that red stuff on the Israeli soldier is lipstick from one of the "peace" passengers aboard the ship.
 
The one person I agree with in this thread is wiseone.

Based on the original picture, how can you come to the honest conclusion that Reuters cropped the photo out of anti-Israeli bias? If a commando is lying on the ground with blood on him then it's clear that the people on the ship attacked him. How would the presence of the knife in the photo change that?

Also, who is holding the knife? Are they the one who stabbed the soldier? Are they simply a bystander who picked up the knife which was lying on the ground? Maybe Reuters couldn't pinpoint this information. I agree, the addition of the knife could be important, but if you don't have the facts about the knife, I can see why it would be decided to remove the knife from the picture. If the knife is shown, then we assume that the person holding it is the one who attacked the soldier, but that might not even be true.

I see a lot of bias in this thread. A lot of you are assuming it was an anti-Israeli move because you are so fervently pro-Israeli; but comparable cases happen in the media where Palestine is painted in a positive light and it's immediately written off as bias.

And I won't apologize to the mods for bringing this up, but Fox news does have similar practices, except we know it's blatantly geared towards pro-Israeli rhetoric. CNN and MSNBC are also agenda-ridden. Instead of fighting this fact, we should all come to the understanding that the media, as a whole, has an agenda and we need to use critical thinking to overcome the blindness that can easy trap our thinking. If you look at the OP photo objectively, it doesn't betray any new information, but it does offer many new potential slants to a story already known.

This is the reason why both sides of the issue have become deaf to one another. You've all just decided to not listen.
 
We know Reuters is anti-Israel for some of their lies and other editing issues. Why edit the photos at all? Why is it with both pictures the knives are gone? If their argument is that the "peace" activists on the flotilla were unarmed and attacked, they would have to portray them that way and without having weapons. From the FoxNews article exposing Reuters they show 3 other pictures where this had happened. One was during the Israeli bombing of Beirut. A Reuters editor shopped the photo to add darker smoke and more of it to make the damage look greater than it was (presumably to make Israel look like harsh bad guys). They also took a picture of a destroyed building and claimed it was some woman's home that was destroyed by Israel. This turned out to be a lie, as the building had been destroyed before the air strike.

Reuters doesn't report, they try to shame reader's opinions by selectively reporting, editing photos, and out right lying. The media bias against Israel is in large number and truly disgusting.
 
Hoplite said:
Considering that Reuters usually has a spotless record, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Reuters and say it was accidental. Frankly I wouldn't have seen the knife if someone hadn't pointed it out.

Honestly I dont see what Reuters would gain by intentionally cropping the image
Click to expand...

You're kidding right ??? Reuters was caught photo shopping numerous photos during the last Israeli-Palestine war.

It's obvious that they cropped the knife out of the photo so it wouldn't appear that the passengers on the vessels were armed. If they were peacemakers, why come armed?
 
Speaking as an expert in photography (undergrad studies at Pratt grad studies at NYUin photography) this cropping issue is really much to a do about nothing.
 
winston53660 said:
Speaking as an expert in photography (undergrad studies at Pratt grad studies at NYUin photography) this cropping issue is really much to a do about nothing.
Click to expand...

If that was true then why crop the photo to leave out the knife?
 
Orion said:
The one person I agree with in this thread is wiseone.

Based on the original picture, how can you come to the honest conclusion that Reuters cropped the photo out of anti-Israeli bias? If a commando is lying on the ground with blood on him then it's clear that the people on the ship attacked him. How would the presence of the knife in the photo change that?
Click to expand...
Well that's quite easy to answer.
The IDF has produced photos of knives, crowbars and many other cold weapons taken on board of the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship where the violence has occurred at.
The activists and their friends have claimed that those were kitchen knives, meant to cut the food for the activists.
Not that anyone rational has taken these claims seriously before, but by cropping the pictures it is clear that Reuters was aiding the activists in their claims.

Now as I said before, was that occurring only one time, was Reuters cropping only one image, it could be seen as a mistake.
Perhaps if it has happened two times it could be considered as a repeated mistake as well.
But the news agency has cropped three pictures, I find it difficult to buy the whole "it was a mistake" argument.
 
Gill said:
You're kidding right ??? Reuters was caught photo shopping numerous photos during the last Israeli-Palestine war.
Click to expand...
Proof?

It's obvious that they cropped the knife out of the photo so it wouldn't appear that the passengers on the vessels were armed. If they were peacemakers, why come armed?
Click to expand...
First, why would Reuters do that?

Second, I carry a knife everywhere I go. Shanking people is not first on my list of reasons to do so. Knives have PLENTY of utility uses outside of sticking them in people.
 
Hoplite said:
Second, I carry a knife everywhere I go. Shanking people is not first on my list of reasons to do so. Knives have PLENTY of utility uses outside of sticking them in people.
Click to expand...

Do you carry it unholstered wherever you go?
Do you carry an unholstered combat knife wherever you go?
Do you, my kind sir, carry an unholstered combat knife while standing next to an injured soldier, wherever you go?
 
winston53660 said:
One reason could be because not all formats are proportionate.
Click to expand...

Those two side by side comparisons look like they have the same proportion and if one needed to be made smaller there are lots of programs out there that will reduce the dimensions. .
 
Apocalypse said:
Not that anyone rational has taken these claims seriously before, but by cropping the pictures it is clear that Reuters was aiding the activists in their claims.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's clear that Reuters was siding with the activists whatsoever. What the activists claim and what Reuters claims are two different things. Reuters along with the AP posted the pictures of the confiscated weapons in their news sources, so I don't see how this one cropping amounts to a cover up. The lid was already blown on the possession of deadly weapons. There is no point in trying to hide it now.

Apocalypse said:
But the news agency has cropped three pictures, I find it difficult to buy the whole "it was a mistake" argument.
Click to expand...

I never claimed it was a mistake. Nothing news agencies do is a mistake. My point is that editorial decisions can have many different reasons. When it comes to Israel and Palestine, people can't think straight and they will assume the worst of anyone who is against them, or anyone who could be construed as being against them. I think the photo crop falls into the latter category. If Reuters really wanted to paint an anti-Israeli story, there are a lot more effective ways to go about it.
 
For the arguments that Reuters should have caught it,

PhotoshopDisasters

Multi-billion dollar companies screw up photo editing software, Reuters is not immune from mistakes
 
Hoplite said:
Proof?

First, why would Reuters do that?

Second, I carry a knife everywhere I go. Shanking people is not first on my list of reasons to do so. Knives have PLENTY of utility uses outside of sticking them in people.
Click to expand...

Here you go.

Reuters admits altering Beirut photo

Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation.' Reuters' head of PR says in response, 'Reuters has suspended photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to photograph.' Photographer who sent altered image is same Reuters photographer behind many of images from Qana, which have also been subject of suspicions for being staged.
Click to expand...
Reuters admits altering Beirut photo - Israel News, Ynetnews

Reuters fired a top photo editor for the Middle East during an internal investigation of two doctored photos from the Israel-Lebanon war that were published last summer.

The editor was the second casualty of the photo manipulation controversy surrounding Reuters freelancer Adnan Hajj. Two of Hajj's photographs showed obvious signs of digital alterations. Facing a storm of criticism last August, Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj and pulled more than 900 of his photos from its archive. A Reuters spokesperson said Thursday that the company would not release the name of the editor who was dismissed.
Click to expand...
Reuters Investigation Leads To Dismissal Of Editor | Middle East > Israel from AllBusiness.com

Here is a number of others from the war that were doctored by the same photographer for Reuters.
 
just a question....Wasn't Reuters also involved in pro Hezbollah propaganda during its last clash with the IDF?


j-mac
 
j-mac said:
just a question....Wasn't Reuters also involved in pro Hezbollah propaganda during its last clash with the IDF?


j-mac
Click to expand...

Read the post above yours.
 
To understand the significance of the cropped picture, you first have to understand the situation at hand.

Isreal has reportedly been claiming for quite some time that Palestinians have been smuggling weapons and other materials used for terrorist activities into Gaza onboard various ships under the banner of peace. In an effort to halt the shipment of questionable goods, Isreal insisted that all suspect ship must enter specific ports they've designated as safe port to be properly inspected. If no illegal goods were onboard, the ship would be allowed to carry on. If illegal or questionable goods were found onboard, they would be confiscated. Seems reasonable.

Some ships refused Isreal's request. As a result, Isreal formed the blockade.

As to the photo, according to reports Isreali Commandos stormed the ship, the Mavi Marmara, because it was suspected of carrying illegal goods. The commandos prepelled down onto the ship via helicopter and opened fire on those they suspected of being part of the PLO or working with them. Only the raid went bad and a few commandos were shot or seriously injured (in the case of the photo, stabbed). Now, to put things in perspective, there are two issues in questions:

1) Did the Isreali commandos board the Mavi Marmara in international waters or while it was in Isreali waters?

2) Were the Turkish men onboard the Mavi Marmara unarmed peacekeepers or were they armed and working with the Palestinian resistance?

Reports were that the Turkish men onboard the Mavi Marmara were unarmed peacekeepers. If so, it would look extremely bad for Reuters to publish pictures of a civilian assumed to be of Turkish decent welding a (bloody) knife while standing over an bloodied Isreali commando. The obvious question with the cropped photo is:

If the men onboard the ship were peacekeepers, how did the commando sustain his injuries?

Similarly, the question concerning the real photo should be:

If the peacekeepers were unarmed, why was atleast one of them holding a knife over an Isreali commando who clearly had been cut or stabbed in the photo?

If the Mavi Marmara was, in fact, transporting legal goods, why then didn't those onboard merely stand down and allow the commandos to inspect the ship?

Clearly, something was wrong with more than just the picture. For the question I have concerning Reuter's role in their jounalism is why crop the photo? Who were you trying to protect? The Turks? Why? It was clear even from the cropped photo that an Isreali commando was injured. What possible rationale would Reuters have for concealing the blood stains on the handrail/staircase or the knife in the civilian's hand? Everything about this image and this incident is wrong except Isreal's right to board suspect vessels entering its waters, if the Mavi Marmara did in fact do so.
 
Objective Voice said:
To understand the significance of the cropped picture, you first have to understand the situation at hand.

Isreal has reportedly been claiming for quite some time that Palestinians have been smuggling weapons and other materials used for terrorist activities into Gaza onboard various ships under the banner of peace. In an effort to halt the shipment of questionable goods, Isreal insisted that all suspect ship must enter specific ports they've designated as safe port to be properly inspected. If no illegal goods were onboard, the ship would be allowed to carry on. If illegal or questionable goods were found onboard, they would be confiscated. Seems reasonable.

Some ships refused Isreal's request. As a result, Isreal formed the blockade.

As to the photo, according to reports Isreali Commandos stormed the ship, the Mavi Marmara, because it was suspected of carrying illegal goods. The commandos prepelled down onto the ship via helicopter and opened fire on those they suspected of being part of the PLO or working with them. Only the raid went bad and a few commandos were shot or seriously injured (in the case of the photo, stabbed). Now, to put things in perspective, there are two issues in questions:

1) Did the Isreali commandos board the Mavi Marmara in international waters or while it was in Isreali waters?

2) Were the Turkish men onboard the Mavi Marmara unarmed peacekeepers or were they armed and working with the Palestinian resistance?

Reports were that the Turkish men onboard the Mavi Marmara were unarmed peacekeepers. If so, it would look extremely bad for Reuters to publish pictures of a civilian assumed to be of Turkish decent welding a (bloody) knife while standing over an bloodied Isreali commando. The obvious question with the cropped photo is:

If the men onboard the ship were peacekeepers, how did the commando sustain his injuries?

Similarly, the question concerning the real photo should be:

If the peacekeepers were unarmed, why was atleast one of them holding a knife over an Isreali commando who clearly had been cut or stabbed in the photo?

If the Mavi Marmara was, in fact, transporting legal goods, why then didn't those onboard merely stand down and allow the commandos to inspect the ship?

Clearly, something was wrong with more than just the picture. For the question I have concerning Reuter's role in their jounalism is why crop the photo? Who were you trying to protect? The Turks? Why? It was clear even from the cropped photo that an Isreali commando was injured. What possible rationale would Reuters have for concealing the blood stains on the handrail/staircase or the knife in the civilian's hand? Everything about this image and this incident is wrong except Isreal's right to board suspect vessels entering its waters, if the Mavi Marmara did in fact do so.
Click to expand...

I don't think a living person could ever get more facts wrong in one single comment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom