Digitally Erasing a Massacre: Why Hezbollywood Was Born

CounterPunch published today an article I wrote on attempts to whitewash the massacre in Qana Lebanon.

If a regular old picture is worth a thousand words, how much does a digitally altered image fetch on the international market today? I ask because a lot of words have been spilled over one digitally altered photograph in particular.

I’ve spent a great deal of time as of late poring over a pair of images, both allegedly derived from a single click of the shutter by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj on August 5. Both depict a Beirut skyline filled with black smoke after an Israeli bombardment. The one cited as the original unedited version shows a jet blue sky over white, sun-soaked buildings from which inky smoke plumes rise. In the obviously altered second photo, the sky is washed out and pale, the skyline is noticeable higher in the frame, the buildings are darker and have strangely sharpened edges, and the cloud plumes have been digitally cloned with no dramatic or even realistic effect. Smoke just doesn’t look like that.

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