The reason why the journalist faked the photo captured my attention. I saw that episode and recall something along this line of thinking, his reason was because the blood-thirsty US soldiers did not have enough carnage to show for their efforts so the photo-journalist created one for them.

It was odd to hear CBS entertainment machine imply that Iraq was not the bloodshed environment that the CBS news machine had created.

My thoughts on the episode match yours: someone's been reading the blogs, and got in a little bit of a dig at the press. The photog's excuse that the composite "shows the truth" despite being fake was perfectly done.

The photog's excuse that the composite "shows the truth" despite being fake was perfectly done.

But what made it really perfect was making him a scruffy Aussie. :-)

Susan, his reason was that most of the time nothing happens, and you can't keep taking photos of nothing. So he put this scene together and the soldiers say, "Yeah, that's our war." Which is close to what you remembered.

But it's a bullshit reason because there is always a lot of picturesque violence to shoot, the temptation is to make it look worse for one side or the other. I think it would have been more realistic if he had shot some carnage and then made it look like the soldiers committed a war crime because "the larger truth" is that "our presence there is a war crime." That would be the Dan Rather philosophy of journalism and similar to the kind of shit that Michael Ware was making up during his drunken rant.

The scary thing about this phenomenon is that photos are no longer worth the proverbial '1000 words'. It might be worth a 10-word sentence, at best.
These days, a photo is more easily manipulated than the CG we see in hollywood FX masterpieces like King Kong, et al. To stage a murder, a political coup, an assassination (see "Death of a President") is so easy to do that the photograph's power to convince and sway a people is quickly diminishing.

Hi. I wrote about this episode too. My husband was in Iraq in 2004-2005, and he says that this photographer's description of life in Iraq is pretty accurate. It is long periods of nothing punctuated by intense moments that don't always lend themselves to a good photo. It's just surprising to hear this admitted on TV.

You are all right that a picture isn't the proof positive it once was, but the balance to fauxtography is the blogosphere with thousands, tens of thousands, millions of savvy people who can spot fakes and report the truth.