Courtesy: nytimes.com
Which of the above two pictures is doctored? If you pointed to the one on the left then you are right on the money.
This doctoring (and one more) got a Reuters photographer in trouble. Adnan Hajj was a freelance photographer for Reuters in Beirut and has submitted over 40 images since July about the ensuing Israeli - Hezbollah conflict. But, he apparently manipulated at least two of them and Reuters ended its relationship with him immediately. It also withdrew over 900+ of photos from its database as an extreme act of caution.
What is even more interesting is how and the speed with which the whole thing unfolded. Reuters first ran this picture on Saturday (Aug 5), a blogger calls fake almost immediately and Reuters fired the photographer on Sunday (Aug 6).
Privacy
While on the technology subject check this out on Search and privacy. Search providers know lot more about us than we realize and it is scary.
AOL published some 20 million search queries on its website and that led to indentification of Thelma Arnold. People started mining the search queries and mapped AOL searcher # 4417749 to Ms. Arnold along the way revealing everything she searched for 3 months.
AOL did subsequently apologize to Ms. Arnold and took down the search query data but then the damage was already done. This incident highlights how much of our information is actually out there in the form of bits and bytes. In the digital world, whatever we touch it has our finger prints on it.
Doctored photos -
ReplyDeleteIts the era of Digital everything ! I am worried about Reuters now. How did they let this happen only to be warned by some guy..which finally ended the Photographer's adventure?
Shame on Reuters. Didn't expect this from you..though I am glad you totally pulled the curtain on that a**e.
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Privacy etc. - Yeah it's scary indeed.
I did a Google search on my name and found that a few emails ( tech ) that I sent showed up.! Don't see them of late though. No wonder a lot of people are scared of the NET.
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Narayanan
ReplyDeleteYes, the digital world has made it easy these days... The credibilit of reuters is definitely took a beating with this one.. but they did the right thing by acting so fast very decisively..
Raman
Fox News is all over this one..
Reuters did good for themselves by acting fast.. and have insititued stringent measures.. So they might survive after all..
its obvious on comparison which is fake and which is't.
ReplyDeletei mean it is not even a good quality manipularion.
if reuters' experts missed out on this one, well they aren't experts then.
PK
ReplyDeleteMay be it 'slipped' through the cracks..
If we go with that line.. then it makes one wonder.. how many such snaps are out there..