Bloggers and news sites are calling out Reuters for its two cropped photos from the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship attacked by Israeli commandos on May 31.  As of June 14, Reuters has admitted it cropped one of the photos, but has not addressed the second photo or charges that Reuters' crops were politically motivated.

The Mavi Marmara was supposedly carrying peaceful activists, the New York Times reported, but the photos with knives and blood...Go to full story

COMMENTARY

A June 9 BusinessWeek article featured a particularly troubling use of an anonymous source. What's worse, the report was based on an article featuring almost all anonymously sourced information.

BusinessWeek reported that, after Reuters released a “report that China’s exports increased faster last month than most economists estimated," "Canadian stocks rose."

The BusinessWeek article...Go to full story

A violent gun battle erupted in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea (SHP PNG)...not really.

Even though this bloodbath did not occur, Reuters, the AFP and many other outlets reported the violent clash January 25 which they claimed resulted in 11 deaths and was linked to an Exxon Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.

On January 26, Stinky Journalism contacted Jeffrey Elapa, a journalist for The National newspaper in...Go to full story

StinkyJournalism has written before on correcting stories, retracting them, or in the online world, sometimes making them disappear. But it is also a question of ethics when a publication decides to kill a story before publication. Killing a flawed or erroneous story or one that broke the rules of ethical journalism is a good move. But what if a story is held back from publication not in the public’s interest, but in violation of their right to know? This is the...Go to full story

The prank-press conference held last week by farcical activists the Yes Men has reopened the “speed versus accuracy” debate, an argument that has taken place in journalism for a good 200 years. Craig Silverman wrote about the issue in the Columbia Journalism Review's blog Regret The Error on October 23. After receiving a faux-press release last week, purportedly from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing a shift in policy to support climate legislation in Congress,...Go to full story

Apparently, October is National Hoax Month -- or so it would seem, given the proliferation of fraudulent stories that appeared over the past couple weeks. It all began with a boy not in a balloon... By now, you've almost certainly heard of Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old boy from Fort Collins, Colorado who, for a brief period of time, was thought to be trapped inside his father's homemade weather balloon. News crews flocked to capture the scene and helicopters from the Colorado...Go to full story

Reuters (and subsequently The New York Times and Washington Post) fell for a hoax press release issued by the farcical activists the Yes Men on Monday, October 19.  Greg Sargent writes in his blog that Reuters published the story, reporting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had reversed its opposition to climate change legislation, based on a hoax press release.  The Reuters story was then picked up by the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other...Go to full story

YouTube announced today the launch of their "YouTube Reporters' Center: Helping you report the news." YouTube, along with "several top news and media organizations," have formed a "dedicated channel that features how-to videos on news reporting." The press release describes a "one-stop-shop for journalism training online, the YouTube Reporters' Center covers a wide range of topics, from preparing for interviews, to fact-checking, to...Go to full story

The problem with media errors is that there can be the perception, if not the reality, of a bias that created the mistake. This is especially true in sensitive areas such as the Middle East conflicts. Reuters should know from a previous scandal that extra care needs to be taken for fact checking--even in captions.

And yet, Bob Owens of Pajama Media points out recent questionable captions have occurred  in four Reuters photographs. He wrote that Reuters...Go to full story

James Joyner, Outside the Beltway said that when the hostage photograph and threat, first appeared on a website, and soon after, in the press, bloggers thought the soldier was photoshopped. However, Matt Drudge (via Politburo Diktat) quickly discovered it was "G.I. Joe" that was staged by terrorist thugs. "Baghdad Bob" was only a 12 inch tall action figure. Reuters and other mainstream media were punked by insurgents--of all people. They employed an easy optical... Go to full story