2006 Lebanon War photographs controversies The 2006 Lebanon War photographs controversies ( also referred to as ' Hizbollywood ' or ' Hezbollywood ' ) refers to instances of photojournalism from the 2006 Lebanon War that misrepresented scenes of death and destruction in Lebanon caused by Israeli air attacks . As a result of the scandal , Reuters fired freelance photographer Adnan Hajj , and the AP disciplined several others . Reuters also fired a photo editor , and implemented stricter controls on its photo - gathering process . The controversy began as an investigation of documents by individual bloggers , and spread to print and television media sources . CAMERA , a pro - Israel media watch organization , said that the alleged photographic manipulations were used by the mainstream media in an attempt to sway public opinion and paint Israel as an aggressor , and suggesting that Israel was guilty of targeting civilians . Photo manipulation . Adnan Hajj , a freelance photographer , was fired by Reuters after he admitted to using Photoshop to add and darken smoke spirals in a photograph of Beirut , in order to make the damage appear worse . Reuters stated that Hajj had edited a second photo , and critics raised further questions about Hajj ' s work . Reuters announced that they had withdrawn " all of Hajj ' s photos , about 920 images , from its archives " . Allegations of staging by press photographers . A photo of a burning Qur ' an amid a pile of rubble , also taken by Hajj , seemed suspicious to " Los Angeles Times " media critic Tim Rutten , since the building it was in had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike hours beforehand , and everything else in the photo was already ash . A number of photographs were taken from Lebanon showing various children ' s toys in the foreground , each surrounded by a pile of rubble . Rutten also wrote about this set , saying that " Reuters might want to check its freelancers ' expenses for unexplained Toys R Us purchases . " Similarly , CAMERA questioned the authenticity of seemingly pristine photographs and photo albums lying on the top of the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli missiles , asking " how often does one find intact photographs sitting alone and undisturbed on top of the ruins of a building levelled by a missile ? But coincidentally or not , photographers from various news organizations have been finding just that in rubble all over Lebanon " . . . " with the only common denominator that all purport to depict Israel ' s destruction of Lebanese civilian life " . 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 . " Ambulance controversy . After the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement saying that " two of its ambulances were struck by [ Israeli ] munitions , although both vehicles were clearly marked " on 23 July 2006 , wounding nine people , the Associated Press reported that " Israeli jets blasted two ambulances with rockets " according to " Ali Deebe , a Red Cross spokesman in Tyre " . The " Boston Globe " quoted Kasim Shaalan as saying " A big fire came toward me , like in a dream " after a " rocket or missile had made a direct hit through the roof " . A controversy developed when ' zombie ' , the pseudonymous owner of the " zombietime " website , posted a long essay arguing ( among other things ) that the damage to the ambulances was far too light for a missile strike . Zombie said that the ambulances were rusted out in the photographs , that explosive damage would not have left a rusted - out shell , and that the photos showed no blast damage but instead a perfectly round hole that coincided precisely with where the roof vent would be . On 28 August Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that " after closer study of the images of the damage to the ambulance , it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax , " a conclusion he later said he drew from initial reports . On 30 August , the ICRC " rebuked " Foreign Minister Alexander Downer " for relying on an unverified internet blog " and said that " there was no evidence to support " the hoax claim . Andrew Bolt , a conservative Australian columnist who had written a column arguing that media photographs contradicted the ICRC ' s claims and that reporters were " passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists " , defended Downer , and noted that later reports claiming that the ambulances were hit by small arms fire contradicted the original reports . Bolt cited an unnamed military source as stating that " there is no weapon that would deliver terminal effects consistent with the pictures , the alleged story and the reputed damage done to ambulance and people . " In December 2006 , Human Rights Watch released a report on forensic investigations they conducted in Qana . The group concluded that there was no hoax . HRW had " originally reported that the ambulances had been struck by missiles fired from an Israeli airplane , but that conclusion was incorrect " . The December 2006 report speculated that the ambulances were hit by a " smaller type of missile " , possibly a " SPIKE anti - armor missile " or " the still experimental DIME ( dense inert metal explosive ) missile . " Both missiles have a relatively small blast radius , with DIME being specifically designed to limit collateral damage . Professor Avi Bell , a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces , criticized the Human Rights Watch report , writing that " the report contains no evidence whatsoever of any other Israeli presence in the area that could have attacked the ambulances . . . . The report presents nothing more than its conjecture that Israel possesses and used unspecified new ' limited impact missiles designed to cause low collateral damage ' fired from drones . . . . Human Rights Watch assumes Israeli guilt without proof , viewing its mission as constructing a scenario , however implausible , in which it might be right . " Allegations of improper captioning . Photographs submitted to Reuters and Associated Press showed a Lebanese woman mourning in front of destroyed buildings , said to be her home , on two different pictures taken by two photographers , published and captioned two weeks apart , which BBC editors replaced on their website after comments pointing to the inconsistency . " Guardian " features writer Patrick Barkham offered the following explanation for other reported time - stamp inconsistencies between different news agencies : [ B ] loggers in Britain and the US want to prove that the mainstream media are swallowing Hizbullah propaganda . [ . . . ] At first , they suggested victims of the Israeli bombings were being carried around and posed for pictures because of different time - stamps on photographs reproduced on news websites . An AP photo was time - stamped 7 . 21 am , showing a dead girl in an ambulance . Another AP picture by a different photographer , stamped 10 . 25 am , showed the same girl being loaded on to the ambulance . A third , with the time 10 . 44 am , showed a rescue worker carrying the girl with no ambulance nearby . Three agencies – AP , AFP and Reuters – denied staging pictures at Qana . And the explanation for the different times was simple . Different news websites , such as Yahoo , put their own time - stamps on photos they receive from feeds ; and AP does not distribute photos sequentially but on their news value and how quickly they are sent in . " The New York Times " improperly captioned a photo taken in the city of Tyre in its online edition ; an injured rescue worker being lifted from the rubble was implied to have been a bombing victim when in fact the worker had slipped and fallen . The newspaper subsequently issued a correction , saying that the photo had appeared in the printed edition with the correct caption . Bruno Stevens photos . A set of photos taken by press photographer Bruno Stevens show a Lebanese gunman with a raging fire in the background . One such photo appeared on the cover of the 31 July issue of " U . S . News & World Report " , with the inside caption , " Hezbollah guerilla poses at the site of an Israeli attack near Beirut " . Another one was published in the 31 July issue of " Time magazine " , with a caption saying the fire came from the " wreckage of a downed Israeli jet . " Michelle Malkin and anonymous blogger Allahpundit stated that the fire in the background appeared to be a large pile of burning tires . On 11 November 2006 Stevens , on the online forum " Lightstalkers " , gave his explanation for the discrepancy . He wrote that he had originally given one of the photos the following caption : He wrote that sometime later , after having done more investigation , he had modified his caption to : In his post , he wrote that he had had no say in the magazines ' captions . He also reaffirmed the validity of his second caption , stating that the fire did not come from a garbage dump and was indeed the result of an Israeli attack ; though he considered the site " a very legitimate target for the Israeli Air Force . "