Reuters Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Lies

Having been caught doctoring pictures taken during of the violence aboard the guerilla flotilla boat, Mavi Marmara, Reuters is circling the wagons and looking for other ways to discredit Israel.

Officially Reuters says the elimination of the IHH terrorists holding knives in the pictures it originally published to its wire was an editing error.

"Reuters is committed to accurate and impartial reporting. All images that pass over our wire follow a strict editorial evaluation and selection process. The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges"

“Committed to accurate and impartial reporting?” Gee, if that was the case why did they add biased captions to the pictures when they posted the non-cropped versions? As reported by Omri Ceren earlier today the wire service added a political message to the pictures.

“Pro-Palestinian activists hold down an Israeli commando on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea early May 31, 2010. Israeli marines stormed the Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza on Monday and nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.”

I agree with Omri when he says

“Activists” were “holding down” the Israelis who “stormed” their “aid ship.” That’s a second stab at objectivity; from a media outlet that’s theoretically overcompensating for the functionally doctored propaganda they just got caught publishing.

The anti-Israel bias of Reuters exhibits itself beyond fake pictures and biased captions, it infects the way they cover Israel-related news.

For example, this past November Reuters reported about Israel’s expansion of the community in Gilo in the story, "White House 'dismayed' at Jerusalem settlement expansion,'"

“The White House said on Tuesday that it was "dismayed" over Israeli approval to expand the Gilo settlement in Jerusalem and sharply criticized the ongoing evictions and demolition of Palestinian homes.

"At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.”

If you were to read the White House transcript for Gibbs statement, nowhere did the press secretary use the word Settlement. It was Reuters who added that word fully knowing the inflammatory baggage the word settlement brings.

Should Reuters ever take the time to learn the truth they would discover Gilo is geographically adjacent to the western part of Jerusalem and sit atop land purchased by Jews prior to WWII.

Reuters has constantly tried to downplay Hamas terrorist against Israel. In November 2009, Israel responded to new rocket attacks by the terrorist group with a bombing raid against two factories used to make weapons and a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza/Egypt border.

“The attacks occurred one day after Hamas said it had reached an agreement with smaller armed groups in the territory to halt sporadic rocket fire toward Israel, which often responds with air strikes.”

Translation: Hamas had nothing to do with the rocket fire, which wasn’t so bad anyway because it was only sporadic, just like the lowest speed of your windshield washers.

Back in February, when Israel added the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, to its list of Heritage sites, Reuters described the site as:

“..where a Jewish settler shot and killed 29 Muslim worshippers in 1994 before being beaten to death at the scene. Some 400 Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves in the city, which is also home to some 150,000 Palestinians.”

Truth is Hebron has always been a Jewish community until a horrific day in 1929 when 67 Jewish residents were massacred by an Arab pogrom.

“On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a[n Arab] police constable named Issa Sherif from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand." (Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917-1929, Oxford England, Basil Blackwell, 1991)

It seems as if history was not one of Reuters’ reporters’ best subjects in High School, but neither was current events. Today, just a few short days after the latest Reuters fauxtography scandal, the news service got caught skewing a story. In its story about Israel allowing additional types of junk food through its side of the Gaza border Reuters said:

“The United Nations says the Israeli blockade has caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, an allegation Israel denies.”

That is not what the United Nations said. At the end of February the UN’s envoy to the Middle East Robert Serry visited the area and proclaimed “There is no humanitarian problem in Gaza.”

There is that old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but when it comes to biased reporting Reuters lying pictures are accompanied by one thousand lying words.