Conflict Journalism

The mainstream media has had a hard time lately in its coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war, as the unofficial media—the bloggers—have been busy pointing out. The sharp-eyed blogger Charles Johnson spotted how a Reuters photo showing burning buildings had been photoshopped. The smoke rising from a damaged building, and the building itself, were copied over the photo—making the result of Israeli...

(FNJ/IFEX) - The Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists, in their written suggestion to the Interim Constitution Drafting Committee, stressed the need to guarantee freedom of the press and expression. The Nepali Congress, in its proposed draft Constitution, has suggested that, keeping in view the special role that the press played during the people's movement, the press should be established as the...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web...

"What's the big deal over a little faked smoke?" That seems to be the prevailing attitude among media pooh-bahs irked by bloggers who exposed the crude Photoshoppery of a Reuters photographer over the weekend. The cameraman, prolific Lebanese stringer and chronicler of Hizballah Adnan Hajj, was fired. But the black cloud of truth-distorting photo fakery, jihadi-sympathizing news staging and sloppy...

KABUL: Pakistan has released an Afghan Sikh journalist who was arrested on the Pakistan-Afghan border and tortured on charges of being an Indian national, and also apologised over the 'mistreatment'. Spokesperson of the Radio and Television of Afghanistan, Anwar Wafadar Samandar, informed media persons in Kabul Wednesday that Pakistan had expressed its apology over the arrest of Dayal Singh...

Reuters has fired Lebanese freelance photographer Adnan Hajj after he transmitted at least two photographs from Lebanon that were doctored to make Israeli attacks seem more dramatic. The news agency said Monday it is investigating Hajj's other work and has withdrawn all of Hajj's photos, about 920 images, from its archives as a precaution. Hajj's career with Reuters unraveled Saturday after...

After the carnage of this past weekend, they would seem to fade almost into insignificance – and that's understandable, but they bear noting. The Israeli destruction of TV transmission towers in Lebanon and an attack on a media convoy in south Lebanon are emblematic of a grim fact: the media have become targets – and weapons – of war. The pen may be "mightier than the sword," but in recent years...

JERUSALEM - In a land of divided faiths and loyalties, people have been separated at times by walls, by checkpoints and now, in time of war, by sound bites. Every hour on the hour, Israeli Jews in this ancient city tune their radios to government-run broadcasts about the battle against Hezbollah, a radical Shiite Muslim group, in Lebanon. At night they turn to three Hebrew-language television...

SAFED, Israel -- The air-raid alarm sounded just as I turned into Safed. An ancient city high in the hills of the Galilee region, Safed has been known since the Spanish Inquisition as a refuge of Jewish mystics, but more recently as a prime target of Hezbollah rockets. It has been hit repeatedly, and broad black circles where the rockets exploded and burned have scarred the hillsides. I drove into...

AITARUN, Lebanon - We reached this demolished village by following a bulldozer with a Hezbollah driver plowing away the rubble blocking the road. Minutes after our convoy of five press cars rolled into town, women, children, elderly men and disabled people began emerging from the ruins, pleading for escape from the bombing. Their desperation to flee the war zone as the clock ticked down on Israel...