The Khulood Badawi Affair: A Retrospective
There's been some confusion as to how the Khulood Badawi affair transpired and how the story subsequently developed. Here's the rundown.
- March 18, 2012It all began with a single tweet:
- The photo to which Arie Amaya-Akkermans was referring was this one, posted on Facebook by a certain Maissam Nablussi:
- After I noted that I hadn't seen the photo before, he went on:
- A quick search on the site TinEye.com revealed that the photo dated back to 2009 and had nothing at all to do with the current round of violence. The claim, then, that the photo had been taken "today" was a falsehood.I followed up:
Miraculously, Reuters, Haaretz, and others were using that very same photo two years ago - bit.ly/wYdP14- (Note: the TinEye search to which this tweet refers has expired, as they all do within 72 hours, but you are welcome to conduct your own -- it's free of charge).
- Meanwhile, it occurred to me that this may not be a one-time thing. So I consulted my timeline. Within minutes, I saw a tweet by a certain Diana Alzeer that had been retweeted by Jalal Abukhater of the hate site Electronic Intifada:
- Using the same website, TinEye.com, I was able to determine nearly instantaneously that the photo dated at least as far back as 2009. And so I tweeted:
- AGAIN! @ManaraRam tweeted this horrific photo, titling it "little girl in #Gaza injured in the Israel airstrikes" - bit.ly/zfrzrv
- A search revealed that the photo has appeared online as far back as 2009, incl. under the title "another day in Iraq" - bit.ly/A9R0RP
- (Note: that title turned out to be misleading, as well)
- In other words, not only was the photo tweeted by @ManaraRam not taken today, it was likely not taken anywhere near #Gaza at all.
- Please, now, join me in asking @ManaraRam to explain her claim that the photo she tweeted is of a #Gaza girl injured in the latest violence.
- And then things got interesting, with this tweet by Arieh Kovler:
- I asked Kovler where he'd found that information. He responded with this:
@avimayer my research just now. See first this 2006 article bit.ly/yxg7GX Then this article on the retraction. bit.ly/z9FKuZ- After doing some quick research of my own, I discovered the original Reuters photo correction from 2006, which reads:
