Indy Media Watch

According to this post on Melbourne Indymedia (of all places) a photo banner from Associated Press, purporting to be masked Jewish settlers, and reprinted in the major Israeli left-wing newspaper Ha'aretz' website is a fake. Google Cache here if it disappears.

I was flipping through my recently saved collection of internet images, and I stopped at the above picture, and wondered for a moment why I'd saved it, and what the context was. I remembered that the masked bandits were supposed to be Jewish settlers.

Did you notice the perfect symmetry?

I certainly did. Someone has enlarged, lightened and modified the image for comparison:


A perfect fit. This person, was presumably hoping to use the image, ostensibly of masked (Jewish) "settlers" later in some Israel bashing on Indymedia*. Instead, in a post I found typical of the blogsphere and not Indymedia, they have exposed AP's fraud, along similar lines to the Code Pink fakery (and denial) earlier this year.

As later comments on the page point out however, Code Pink can at least claim their image was merely a 'banner' on the website, and could even argue it was a bit of creative licence. AP on the other hand, who one would would hope are not entitled to any 'creative licence' in reporting the news, assigned this caption to the image:

Masked settlers standing next to a banner showing the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Sunday. (AP)

Wrong.

Update: Welcome readers linking from a post over at the Jawa Report, where comments ask further questions, Pajamas Media, Israellycool and friends. Special greetings also, to one of Israel's foremost cartoonists who has left a comment below. I am flattered.

Update 2: An anonymous tipster advised Ace of Spades HQ:

While this picture was run on the left-wing (I'm told) Haaretz.com, with attribution to the AP, in fact an earlier AP photo (actually it looks like a picture used in a banner, with additional graphics) does not show the "second settler."

The photo may have been taken from AP, photoshopped by someone else, and then used by Haaretz (with the AP attribution) without Haaretz realizing it had been altered. They'd be guilty then of gross negligence (I mean, how obvious is it that that "second settler" is just a duplicate of the first?), not deliberate deception or distortion.

And it appears, at the moment at least, that AP didn't create the fake photo. Or, at least, their original photo shows no "second settler."

This was an anonymous tip, no links are provided and even if true, it's difficult to say who's responsible. What indisputable however, is that 'someone' in the Mainstream Media, at Ha'aretz or AP has screwed up. Badly. Again. At this point, neither AP or Ha'aretz have commented or corrected and I post the above in the interests of updates, which the Blogsphere is pretty good at.

*Correction: A comment on the Indymedia page notes:

I resent most...this creatively licentious comment.[as above] I saved the image, as a matter of fact, because part of my brain suggested immediately that it was faked -- and I was hoping to work out what part of my brain that was. The alarm trigger was symmetry detection.

I stand corrected.