Garbage in, garbage out
Michelle Malkin

Charles Johnson reports on a damning new twist in the ongoing Middle East fauxtography scandal:

You’re not going to believe this one.

All our suspicions about mainstream media slanting and distorting the news from the Middle East are confirmed in a bombshell of a post by Bruno Stevens, at the Lightstalkers pro photographers’ forum: The Lebanon ‘garbage dump’ story: complete explanation. (Hat tip: Snapped Shot.)

His photograph, published by both US News and World Report and Time Magazine, had a caption describing the scene as the wreckage of an Israeli jet shot down by Hizballah. In this post, Stevens reveals that the captions he sent in with his pictures described the scene accurately—but editors at the magazines changed the captions to completely alter the story.

[...]

... And even more damning is the photo they chose not to publish, showing a medium range ground-to-ground missile launcher hidden in a civilian truck—on a Lebanese Army base....

Fauxtography: The great Hezbollah tire fire revisited
Allahpundit

... I thought Hezbollah had deliberately set fire to a pile of tires at a garbage dump to make it look like an Israeli jet had crashed there after being shot down. Not so, says Bruno Stevens, writing today at the Lightstalkers forum for photojournalists. For one thing, it wasn’t a garbage dump.

And it wasn’t a jet that crashed there.

According to Stevens, this was the caption he submitted with his photo:

“Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 An Israeli Air Force F16 has alledgedly been shot down while bombing a group of Hezbollah owned trucks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher.”

And this was the caption that appeared in Time:

[image]

He says he went back to the site to collect more evidence and eventually submitted a revised caption, although it’s unclear if he did so before or after the photo had been published:

“Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 The Israeli Air Force bombed a group of Hezbollah chartered trucks parked on the back of large Lebanese Army barracks , at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher, at least one missile was hit, misfiring high into the sky before falling down and starting a huge fire in the barracks’ parking lot.”

Emphasis again mine.

Why would Time deliberately omit key details about what Israel was targeting and, just as importantly, where it was located? Charles has a theory.