Reuters Doctors Flotilla Incident Photo: UPDATED - Second Reuters Doctored Photo

Seen above - left, the uncropped photo. On the right, Reuters' released photo (Fox).

by the Left Coast Rebel

Many of us are more than aware of the media's proclivity to run with a meme despite the facts involved, especially if it fulfills the far-left government/media complex agenda. Little did we know just how far the press goes to do so:

The British-based Reuters news agency has been stung for the second time by charges that it edited politically sensitive photos in a way that casts Israel in a bad light. But this time Reuters claims it wasn’t at fault.

The news agency reacted to questions raised by an American blogger who showed that Reuters' photo service edited out knives and blood traces from pictures taken aboard the activist ship Mavi Marmara during a clash with Israeli commandos last week. Nine people were killed and scores were injured in the clash.

The pictures of the fight were released by IHH, the Turkish-based group that sponsored the six-ship fleet that tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.

In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.

Based on past behavior with Reuters....

This is the second time Reuters has been accused of manipulating photos. In 2006 a Reuters photographer, Adnan Hajj, doctored several photos of the destruction caused by Israel's bombing of Beirut. In one he added smoke to a panoramic picture of South Beirut to make the damage look more severe than it was. In a second photo, he showed a woman whose home had supposedly been destroyed in the same raid, but an investigation revealed that the woman's house had been destroyed prior to the Israeli strike.

Trace Gallagher over at Fox noted as well this morning that the Reuters cropped photo in the header above ran in the biggest newspaper in the Sunday edition of the biggest newspaper in Turkey. Connect the dots - in other words, Reuters played into the 'peaceful activist flotilla' meme that many in the press were running with and perhaps put people's lives at risk as well.
BigGovernment.com has more.

UPDATED: As soon as I finished up this post, Fox reported that a second photo is in play as well that accompanies the first. This one may be even more egregious. YidwithLid brings us the context of the following pictures, I say they speak for themselves:

Doctored Reuters photo:

Undoctored (note knife and blood @ right):