Reynolds: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux Reynolds: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux

The picture here is of "Green Helmet Guy", who showed up in so many photos published by the MSM about the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in response to Hezbollah firing missles into their country. This guy not only showed up in a lot of photos as a "rescuer" or "civil defense worker", but also apparently staged most of the shots too. Unfortunately, for Glenn Harlan Reynolds' point, this photo is staged, not faked. Glenn in a TCS Daily article: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux asks where we are going with news photos being so easy these days to stage and fake.

Regardless of using a staged instead of faked photo with his article, Glenn makes a good point. It is becoming ever harder to determine whether what we see is real or not, and in the case of Hezbollah, whether it was pure propoganda, as was so often the case there. Hezbollah's problem was that their minions were just not that good at it - yet. It was apparently fairly easy to detect the faked photos, and a lot of the staging has been disclosed by careful work of the blogosphere.

One question that Glenn asks that I think is important is why do the MSM outlets participate in it? Al Reuters is still trying to pass off pictures of an old junked press SUV as the one they claim was shot up by the Israelis, despite being a different color, showing so much rust, etc. Such fakery has to ultimately cheapen their brand as people begin to doubt everything they publish. I would think that it would be a much better business plan to try to guarantee accuracy, esp. for a news agency like al Reuters that resells news for a living.