The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is the News agency Reuters. They get the award for the doctored photos they published from Lebanon. Go visit Little Green Footballs which has all the evidence. Reuters has since withdrawn the photos.

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
Yaakov Lappin

A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

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Reuters' head of PR Moira Whittle said in response: "Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures."

"As soon as the allegation came to light, the photograph, filed on Saturday 5 August, was removed from the file and a replacement, showing the same scene, was sent. The explanation for the removal was the improper use of photo-editing software," she added.

Earlier, Charles Johnson, of the Little Green Footballs blog , which has exposed a previous attempt at fraud by a major American news corporation, wrote : "This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image."

As you can imagine this was the subject of much talk on the blogosphere yesterday. Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters, Don Surber(Who asks how do you recall a newspaper), Beth at MVRWC and James Joyner at OTB were just a few of those commenting. Reuters deserves today's award, they just aren't the first news agency to stage photos. Anyone remember this New York Times photo op?

This isn't Reuters first knucklehead award either. Click here, here, and here. Somehow I don't think we'll have to wait long before they collect another one. For publishing fake photos, Reuters is today's knucklehead of the day.

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