The "responsible" and "carefully edited" folks at the New York Times published this AFP photo:
With this heading:
Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border.
Take a moment to gaze at that picture. See the problem? That's not a missile. It's an unexploded artillery shell, and drones don't fire artillery. But no one at AFP or the responsible and carefully edited New York Times noticed that fact (for obvious reasons), nor the implications. Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker was not so easily fooled and noted that the photo must have been staged. His temerity has apparently raised hackles at the New York Times:
Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, sent me an email the other day.
...
But most importantly, the correction does not address the real significance of the error: the fact that the picture must be a fake, staged with a prop piece of ordnance, not a missile.
Bill Keller must have read my article before he responded to my article, no? If he is in the habit of sending responses to articles he hasn’t read, he is even more arrogant and careless than I thought. So assuming he read my article, he knows that he has published a fake picture. And AFP gave it to him.
To quote Bob Dole, Where’s the outrage?
Bill Keller’s lack of protest over being had, his lack of evident resolve to get to the bottom of the situation, and his unwillingness to confront the actual criticism I made suggest some pretty ugly conclusions. He has been duped and he is content to pretend it is all just a little thing, not his fault, and that doesn’t matter very much, anyway. Or so it seems.
Is this really the extent of his regard for publishing the truth?
Um, that was a rhetorical question, right?
(h/t: Powerline)