If I were the AP, Reuters or even UPI, I’d begin to look real long and hard at just who’s pictures I was buying. First we have the Reuter’s fiasco, now it appears (unsurpisingly - they’ve done it in the past as well), the Associated Press has an issue as well.

“Weaping Woman”:

“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.

In the first photograph , taken by Reuters, a woman is seen in front of a bombed out building in Beirut. “A Lebanese woman wails after looking at the wreckage of her apartment, in a building, that was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut,” Reuters said in its caption. The photo was dated July 22 2006.

A second photograph of a woman who looks exactly like the woman in the first Reuters image, even bearing the same scar on her left cheek, is then supplied by the Associated Press.”

The article goes on to say that the image has been removed, but that’s not the point. First Reuters and AP have both been caught with questionable editorial issues. These photos just don’t get pasted in a front page or on a website, somebody should be checking to see if they are real or not. Obviously up to this point neither AP or Reuters has thought that necessary. They are going to have to rethink that policy because the checking is going to continue.

Get used to it, it’s a new media world.