An old aphorism declares that "truth is the first casualty of war," and that's certainly been the case with some news coverage of the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon by the heavily liberal-biased Western media.

Photographers for the venerable Reuters news agency and the New York Times, to name two, have been caught red-handed doctoring photographs to cast Israel's counterattack against Hezbollah terrorist aggression in the worst light.

For example, one shot, captioned "An Israeli F-16 warplane fires missiles during an air strike ..." actually depicts the aircraft dropping a defensive flare, and was manipulated to show three "missiles" (flares) instead of the actual one.

Reuters news agency announced tersely Aug. 7 that it had fired a Beirut-based freelance photographer discovered to have altered two photographs from the fighting in Lebanon using Adobe's powerful Photoshop software. Reuters also removed 920 pictures by that photographer from its database, pledging tighter vetting of images from the Middle East, requiring review by the agency's senior photo editors.

"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Tom Szlukovenyi, global photo editor of Reuters, said in a release. "Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy."

A New York Times photo essay entitled Reports from Israel and Lebanon: Attack in Tyre shows a subject originally captioned "Dead Guy w/ no dust" showing up with a hat on in another photo pointing out something to the photographer, and scrambling over debris in other shots, then finally laying "dead" on top of debris, sweating and clutching his hat by his side.

After exposure by sharp-eyed bloggers, the NYT issued a correction: "A picture caption with an audio slide show on July 27 about an Israeli attack on a building in Tyre, Lebanon imprecisely described the situation in the picture. The man pictured, who had been seen in previous images appearing to assist with the rescue effort, was injured during that rescue effort, not during the initial attack, and was not killed."

Uh, right ...

A comprehensive report on the zombietime.com blogsite challenges the authenticity of dozens of photographs of the war, including digitally manipulated images, scenes staged by Hezbollah presented as authentic news events, photographers themselves staging scenes, and false or misleading captions on photos taken at different times or places.

The report is found at: www.zombie time.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

A superb video expose can also be found at http://www.aish.com/Movies/PhotoFraud.asp

Editors at Vancouver IndyMedia comment: "All of these forms of fraud have the same intent: to serve as propaganda for Hezbollah, and to make the Israeli attacks look as brutal as possible. And, taken together, they raise a very serious question: Can any of the coverage by the entrenched media be trusted?"

Good question indeed.

One image captioned: "A mannequin adorned with a wedding dress stands near the site of an Israeli air raid ..." was obviously staged to elicit faux poignancy - a blast powerful enough to flatten buildings a few yards away wouldn't leave a mannequin in a wedding dress standing conveniently posed right next to the bomb site. Puh-leez!

Yahoo! also posted another mannequin-in-the-rubble photo.

Then there were all those amazingly clean and new-looking stuffed toys arranged amid dust-grimed debris in countless photos and video clips. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin reports in the Washington Times that a German television station aired footage showing a "propaganda director" positioning a child's corpse, yanking it from an ambulance, placing it on two different stretchers for cameras, and pushing bystanders out of the way for clearer shots.

Malkin cites CNN Anderson Cooper commenting, "They took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah-controlled territories ... that were heavily bombed ... they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and ... told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off ... I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them."

Responsible. truthful reportage would expose this sort of chicanery, rather than playing along with (or commissioning) it, and/or only grudgingly acknowledging the fraud after exposure, which L.A. Times Tim Ruttan characterized as an "utter lack of interest in exploring whether this is a unique or representative case."

Thank providence for the Internet, helping to keep the rascals honest, or at least less brazenly duplicitous.