Newsnight article on Reuters and the bloggers

Post written as watching Newsnight Monday 7th Aug.
So here we go... its Emily Maitlis in the chair.

About 16 mins in – if you just want to catch the article on BBC's watch again. Blogs not mentioned so far. They have photo journalists explaining how blatant the manipulation is – but it wasn't their organisations that reported it.

Hajj speaks to Newsnight to give his reaction. He says he was just clearing dust on a frame from the photo(for the extra smoke photo). Adnan Hajj says no no its perfect on the F16 photo... (Right-O Adnan - sorry if we can't believe you this time - or any of the other times.)

EU Referendum's header makes the picture this time – rather than when only a part of his blog was shown on a Newsnight article on Qana last week. ( Richard North gets interviewed – and the word blog gets its first use in print ). He gets to put his case this time.

Shame Richmond (Daily Telegraph) has been put on to protect the MSM as he works for a right wing paper – perhaps working practices need to be changed – he's very evasive saying the image showed a man with a child in his arms killed in the bombing, so its not that bad if it was staged. I'd be ashamed of myself if I put up that sort of argument – so should he be. (( I've since checked his blog - he makes an argument about photos chosen - but he ignors the difference between the two images he uses as an example of what to chose - one has a western looking red cross worker - the other a eastern bearded Hezbollah supporter with no crosses on him. They have very different messages to the world, especially the Arab/Muslim world )).

Reuters (Paul Homes) says he welcomes scrutiny from Bloggers. And he welcomes bloggers exposing manipulations by MSM. He admits media has been manipulated in the past. Its a fairly honest and complete answer. The say they have pulled all of Hajj's work off their database. He's done well – under bad circumstances. In fact he makes the case for bloggers keeping the MSM true.

Well done to Newsnight for running the article and Paul Homes said encouraging things. Either he's just socking up the bad feeling or he really does get it.

Lets hope things improve and no one dies from misinformation or history changed due to published lies or sloppy journalism.