Hat tip to Michelle for the title.

If you haven’t been living under a rock this past week, you have undoubtedly seen blogger coverage of the doctored photos being published by al-Reuters and other outlets. As I was surfing through the news pictures on Yahoo, I noticed something interesting myself.

After LGF had originally exposed al-Reuters stringer Adnan Hajj to be a photoshopping fraud, other bloggers joined in the review of thousands of photos submitted by stringers covering the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. Rusty Shackleford at MyPetJawa caught Hajj in another photoshopping job. The efforts of these and many other bloggers led to an al-Reuters admission of impropriety and the firing of Adnan Hajj. (Though Rusty thinks he may still be employed under another name)

Rusty hoisted his “trophy” as al-Reuters killed this second fraudulent picture as well.

Or did they?

In searching the Yahoo news photos, I came across this photo:

The tagline:

An Israeli warplane sends out a flare as three bombs are dropped on an area during a mission over the southeast of the port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Looks pretty similar to Hajj’s photo. Although the plane’s in a slightly different position, it’s dropping the same apparent flare and three bombs - and this photo looks to be taken just moments before Hajj’s photo, as evidenced by the shorter smoke trail and poximity of the falling bombs… but they’re taken from virtually the same position, though this AP photo says the bombing is occuring over Tyre on August 8th, while the al-Reuters photo says the bombing is occuring over Nabatiyeh on August 2nd.

Frayer and Hajj were also side by side in photographing “Green Helmet Guy“.

So is it just a coincidence that the latest Frayer photo looks so similar to the one Hajj photoshopped, despite being 6 days apart and in different cities? Considering the amount of fraud already exposed by the media outlets in this conflict, it’s hard to write this off as a mere coincidence.

UPDATE: A few people have emailed and left comments pointing out that it may be two different planes (F-15 vs F-16) in the respective pictures. I guess this is just a popular photo for the stringers.

1. MORE Media Lies: Hezbo With Gun + Burning Trash = Downed Israeli Jet

   I can’t tell you enough times DON’T TRUST ANYTHING YOU SEE IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA! And I can’t ask the media enough times, where the hell are all the editors!? How is it all you high paid jackasses manage to…

   Trackback by RightWinged.com — 11:57 pm
   

2. More Staging Of The News

   And people wonder why conservatives have so little faith/trust in the media.

   This time, it’s not Reuters….it’s (surprise!) the New York Times and US News & World Report.

   Michelle is on top of it, as it Gateway Pundit and AllahPundit.

   A pag…

   Trackback by Iowa Voice — 1:42 am
   

3. Brilliant job. It is getting ‘better’ and ‘better’ everyday. How dumb can you gat than putting out a burning tyre as a crash site? Another dent in the cerdibility of the mainstream media. Hope they will work hard to restore it.
   Tha

   Comment by tom — 3:01 am
   

4. I thought the original photo was of an F-16. This photo looks to be an F-15.

   Comment by billy-jay — 6:24 am
   

5. I agree with billy-jay, it is an F-15 and the other plane appeared to be an F-16

   Comment by Paulk — 7:11 am
   

6. I agree this one is an F-15 (wing shape, side intakes, etc), but does the IAF even *have* those? I think they’ve exclusively used F-16’s for fixed-wing missions in this conflict, which would make this photo an obvious fraud. Anybody know where to look up whether the US has (ever) sold F-15’s to Israel?

   Comment by MichaelUSA — 7:59 am
   

7. Looks like they have.

   Comment by Texas Rainmaker — 8:33 am
   

8. The US has sold F-15’s, F-16’s, A-4’s, and F-4’s to the Israelis over the years, as well as AH-1 Cobras, AH-64 Apaches, CH-53’s… and probably some other stuff I don’t recall. The Israelis like to put a lot of “after-market” stuff onto the aircraft we send them, though - so their versions will often look slightly different and carry gear that we have no intel on. They also make them compatible with their homegrown weapon systems that are not of US design and would therefore not be compatible with the aircraft typically. Good example of that is the Israeli-made “Python” series of air-to-air missiles which are similar to the Sidewinder… but better.

   Comment by Mike the Marine — 8:58 am
   

9. […] A couple blogs have noticed that Adnan Hajj (the Reuters stringer recently exposed and banned from Reuters) either goes under a couple of other names of journalists whos photos haven’t been banned yet, or these other photogs have an amazing talent for taking the same pictures as him. […]

   Pingback by Tai-Chi Policy » The Photojournalism Scandal Continues! — 9:37 am
   

10. definately an F-15, likely the F-15I Ra’am which is a derivative of the US F-15E (at least, I think I see conformal fule tanks on the sides, cant blow it up clearly enough to be sure). Anyway, the best site on the web for IDing Israeli weapons is www.israeliweapons.com. The faked photo first outed was definately an F-16 model, likely the F-16I Sufa. The “I” is for Israel. Mike the Marine is right on…Israel has its own (very good) electronic systems they like to use, and we block the export of our top end stuff often enough that they don’t want to be dependent on us (or anyone) when they can avoid it.

    Never let something like combat aircraft take over your life otherwise you have long winded answers like this.

    Comment by sh1fty — 10:19 am
    

11. Thanks for the info everybody!

    From TX-Rainmaker’s link:
    “Israel … is currently obtaining an air-to-ground version called the F-15I.” (page last updated December 2005)

    So I guess that means they could have some in use for bombing missions, or maybe modified their earlier F-15’s to improve air-to-ground usefulness.

    I larn sumpin’ ever’ day…

    Comment by MichaelUSA — 1:14 pm
    

12. […] The Texas Rainmaker also has a discussion of recent photographic *cough* integrity. […]

    Pingback by The Random Yak » Dead Photojournalism Walking — 2:37 pm
    

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