The Shell Game

Refreshing candour about the gullibility of journalists from Boston Herald City Editor Jules Crittenden:

The lesson of the Reuters photo fakery scandal is nothing any hapless once-bitten carnival mark couldn’t have warned them about. Discredited photographer Adnan Hajj was employing the oldest and worst-kept secret in any con artist’s bag of tricks: People will see what they want to see. They will believe what they want to believe...

Everyone in the news business gets taken for a ride sooner or later. It’s an occupational hazard. What is surprising is the scale of it in Lebanon. And what is tragic about this is, as a Boston Herald photo editor noted, editors everywhere can no longer trust the pictures from Lebanon. The public cannot know what is staged and what is real. They cannot know the true scope of the devastation that Hezbollah’s aggression against Israel and its cynical tactics have brought on the Lebanese people. The con artists have shafted themselves and their own people with their cheap tricks.

-- Nick