Allegations of Photo Staging By Others
Salam Daher, the head of the South Lebanon civil defense organisation, was accused by bloggers and websites of being a Hezbollah member and of using the bodies of children for propaganda purposes in photographs taken at the scene of the 2006 Qana airstrike. He denied the accusations, stating: "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life." Daher, who responds to airstrikes in an ambulance and digs under bombed buildings to retrieve the bodies of the dead and injured, said he displays the children for cameras to show how Israeli airstrikes killed civilians. Commenting on photos of him holding a dead infant over his head, he said: "I did hold the baby up, but I was saying 'look at who the Israelis are killing. They are children. These are not fighters. They have no guns. They are children, civilians they are killing.'" He told the Associated Press that he had no regrets or apologies: "I wanted people to see who was dying. They said they were killing fighters. They killed children."
On 8 August, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper reported about a Hezbollah press tour of a bombed-out area in southern Beirut on 23 July 2006, during which Hezbollah operatives asked a group of empty ambulances to switch on their sirens and flashing lights for the benefit of the waiting press photographers, to give the impression that they were responding to casualties. Senior Producer Charlie Moore described the same tour as a "dog-and-pony show".
The same day, Richard Landes and The Wall Street Journal editorial writer James Taranto challenged the validity of a photograph taken by Associated Press worker Lefteris Pitarakis. The picture in question depicted several Lebanese residents who were reportedly killed in an Israeli air strike. Upon close examination of a single still image, Taranto concluded that one man in particular was pretending to be dead.
"Plainly this scene was staged for the benefit of the cameras, though it is important to note we know of no evidence that the photographer was complicit in the staging. It is, however, a clear example of how terrorist groups use journalists to spread their propaganda."
A cursory examination of several other stills in the photographic sequence established that the man first assumed to be feigning his own death was in fact dead. Consequently both Richard Landes and James Taranto acknowledged they were "mistaken."
Read more about this topic: 2006 Lebanon War Photographs Controversies
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