WEDNESDAY'S LINKS: College Newspapers Thriving, Bloggers' Direct Hit, FCC Back on Media Ownership Rules

By: E&P Staff In today's links, the new head of the Federal Communications Commission says he is open to considering individual changes to media rules in smaller decisions, college newspapers are thriving, and bloggers score a direct hit on the mainstream media with the exposure of a doctored Reuters photograph.


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Blogger Takes Aim At News Media and Makes a Direct Hit
Washington Post: Charles Johnson could tell there was something wrong with the news photo the minute he saw it. Something about the three plumes of black smoke rising over the buildings -- smoke just doesn't curl that way, pirouetting in unison. It was, he wrote Saturday, "blatant evidence of manipulation." He was right on target, and the exposure of the doctored airstrike photo was a coup for Johnson and his four-year-old political blog, Little Green Footballs.


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Bloggers Drive Inquiry on How Altered Images Saw Print
New York Times: As of yesterday afternoon, Adnan Hajj was the most-searched term on the Technorati Web site, which tracks what is being discussed in the blogosphere. And a rendering of his work was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. The matter has created an uproar on the Internet, where many bloggers see an anti-Israel bias in Mr. Hajj?s manipulations, which made the damage from Israeli strikes into Beirut appear worse than the original pictures had. One intensified and replicated plumes of smoke from smoldering debris. In another, he changed an image of an Israeli plane to make it look as if it had dropped three flares instead of one.


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Now AP Beirut Photo Faces Questions
A woman has made two appearances in photographs used by the Associated Press and Reuters, allegedly wailing over the destruction of her Beirut home. US bloggers have however noticed that photographs were taken two weeks apart from each other, according to times stamps on the images, and that the photographs were taken in different locations. "Either this woman is the unluckiest multiple home owner in Beirut, or something isn't quite right," noted the author of the Drinking From Home blog.


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Reuters Takes a Hit in the War on the MSM
CJR Daily: "To offer a counterargument, which is just as speculative as the claim of bias, we think the problem might have to do more generally with the pressures inherent in war photography," writes Gal Beckerman. "Every war quickly provides its stock images -- in this war, it's definitely a cityscape with smoke rising above it. And a freelance photographer, to stay in business, has to one-up or outdo whatever it is that is already out there. He has to provide the most dramatic, poignant, emotionally stirring shot he can. And he has to do it before any of the other hundreds who are also shooting right by him."


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FCC's McDowell Open to Smaller Media Rulings
The newest Republican member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Robert McDowell, said on Tuesday he was open to considering changes to media ownership rules individually rather than as a package. The agency in June kicked off the debate over whether to relax several ownership restrictions, including if it should lift a ban preventing a company from owning a newspaper and television or radio station that serve the same market.


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College Newspapers Are Thriving
Wall Street Journal: It's not breaking news that the newspaper industry is losing the attention of young readers. But one sector of the industry is defying the trend: college papers. Hip, local, relevant and generated by students themselves, college newspapers have held steady readership in recent years while newspapers in general have seen theirs shrink. Big advertisers are going on campus to reach these young readers. Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have all placed recent ads in college newspapers. Now, media giants are jumping in.


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A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749
New York Times: Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher?s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield. No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from ?numb fingers? to ?60 single men? to ?dog that urinates on everything.? And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for ?landscapers in Lilburn, Ga,? several people with the last name Arnold and ?homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia.?