News Media Fakery: It Goes On and On and On...

Don't miss this post at Michelle Malkin's site. It appears that a photo of "burning Lebanon" which appeared on the cover of U.S. News and World Report was actually a burning garbage dump!

There are also serious questions about whether a Lebanese "corpse," shown in a photo published by the New York Times, was actually more than capable of walking around. Look at the photos and see what you think.

Over at Opinion Journal, James Taranto also has photos which seem to show the Associated Press used walking corpses in Lebanon. (Hat tip: Betsy's Page.)

Power Line raises questions about yet more photos, by proven faker Adnan Hajj, which at a minimum seem to have been staged with people running for dramatic effect.

There's one connecting thread between these phony photos and those already uncovered in the last few days: a hatred for Israel and the desire to incite negative public opinion against Israel's fight against Islamic terrorism.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that editors at major newspapers, magazines, and wire services are so decidedly uncurious about the work which is submitted to them for publication. Their desire to make Israel look bad is such that they are publishing myriad questionable photos without any critical examination whatsoever. All it's taken to uncover the problems is some proverbial "bloggers in pajamas" taking the time to actually look over the material and ask questions.

And yet just the other day Kathleen Carroll of the Associated Press huffed "It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy." That comment reminds me of the original angst and derisive comments about pajama-clad bloggers during the time of Rathergate.

The media has been caught once again attempting to create the news rather than report the news, and the coverage in Lebanon may well prove to be one more nail in the coffin of the "old media."

Update: In an update, Michelle Malkin points out that the New York Times ran a very different caption under the "corpse" photo than ran on the photographer's own website. The photographer says the man "had fallen and was hurt," which might possibly be plausible (though the photo, as Power Line notes, looks extremely staged); but the New York Times caption reads "bodies were still buried under the rubble," implying that the man in the photograph was one of them.

Late Update: But wait, there's more!

Kathleen Parker sums up the latest in "Photoshopping History."

Wednesday Update: In a fresh update, Michelle Malkin reports that Time Magazine used the same "burning garbage dump" photo as U.S. News and World Report, claiming that it was "the wreckage of a downed Israeli jet." Time has apparently admitted the error. But how did they end up using the photo in the first place? The unquestioning acceptance and use of the phony photos is so widespread it boggles the mind.