Sly vs. Sly: Time Condemns Adnan Hajj, Sort of

James Poniewozik, writing for Time:

Mainstream media will do itself no favors by downplaying this as a controversy hyped up by opinionated bloggers.

I couldn't agree more.

The ever-widening "fauxtography" scandal that started with Adnan Hajj's altered photographs and now includes allegations of false captions and staging "news" by employees of the New York Times, US News & World Report, Agence France Presse...and Time magazine, is enough to rock most people's faith in the so-called Mainstream Media.

That's why deliberate efforts to minimize the potential impact of the false reporting, like this:

When I saw the doctored Reuters photograph of smoke rising over Beirut, side by side with the unaltered version of the same scene, the first thing I thought was: which is supposed to be the scary one?

And this:

If I saw either cloud of smoke rising from a bomb blast in my own city, I wouldn't be worried much about where it fell on the Pantone color wheel.

And this:

They have a point—well, half a point, anyway. The principle of not faking anything in the news is absolute. But the effects of particular fakeries are relative.

And this:

Hajj's manipulations are gratuitous and almost pointless: whichever side you take in the war, the devastation in Lebanon and Israel is real and well-documented, faked photos or not. A bomb leaves you just as dead, however dark a cloud it kicks up over your remains.

...do a disservice to everyone, including the MSM. In his intro, this writer referred to Hajj's PhotoShopping as "picayune".

But, who is this writer who disagrees so completely with James Poniewozik, and wants to downplay the Hajj Photoshop affair? James Poniewozik. These are the things he wrote before he said the mainstream shouldn't "downplay" the Reutersgate scandal...in the same column.