Star illustrates new story with photo from 2008

The front page of today's Daily Star includes a dramatic photo of an explosion in Texas:

As Scott Bryan points out, the same photo is prominent on pages 8-9, illustrating their double page spread.

The Star is reporting on the explosion yesterday at a fertiliser plant in West, Texas.

Unfortunately, the photo the Star uses is from an explosion at an oil refinery in Big Spring, (west) Texas in 2008.

(Big hat-tip to Scott Bryan)

MailOnline uses snow photo from 2010 in new article

A MailOnline article (published 4 February, last updated 07:35 today) about the snow includes this photo of York's Stonegate:

How strange that York appears to have Christmas decorations up in early February. They don't, of course. It's just that the MailOnline has included an old photo - one that was taken on 1 December 2010.

YorkMix explained yesterday:

York only had the lightest sprinkling of snow overnight, all of which had gone by mid morning.

The Express was caught out last month using an old snow scene photo and claiming it was new. 

(Hat-tips to YorkMix and Jerry Ibbotson)

'Yesterday'

A quick mention for something that has already been covered on The Media Blog.

The front page of the Express on 12 January looked like this:

Under the image, the caption reads:

A snowplough battles through the blizzards battering the M6 in Cumbria yesterday.

Yesterday? That's odd, given that the Express used the very same photo on 7 December 2012.

Given the paper's penchant for over-the-top, worst-case-scenario weather headlines, this may not have been an accident.

But if it was, it follows other recent photo errors such as the Czech soldiers it said were British, and the Dutch Olympians it said were British.

(Hat-tip to DailyExpressLOL)

"Our brave troops"

Daily Express, 27 December 2012:

Major Laurence Roche, British Army officer serving in Afghanistan with The Black Rats:

(See also: the Express uses a photo of the Dutch in an article about British Olympic success)

MailOnline's 'photoshop fail'

Over the last twelve months or so, MailOnline has been quick to jump on 'photoshop fails' by others.

Despite that, they published this picture in an article yesterday:

(Hat-tip to Squeaker)

MailOnline publishes another fake photo it found on Twitter

MailOnline reports on looting in the wake of Superstorm Sandy:

The article, written by Adam Shergold and Emily Anne Epstein begins:

Several brazen thugs have robbed their neighbors and their local shops of everything from basic food stuffs to expensive electronics and they are taking to Twitter to broadcast their spoils.

'Check out this laptop I scored,' SevenleafB tweeted earlier today. 'It's easy just reach out an grab it.'

It appears the looters are organizing through the hashtag #SANDYLOOTCREW.

It then publishes one of the tweets in question - the one referred to in the MailOnline headline:

However, if you search Google Images for that photo - which doesn't take long - it pops up in a July 2010 story from California's Oakland Tribune.

Indeed, several of the images used by the 'brazen thugs' on #SANDYLOOTCREW are old - some date from 2005 and 2008.

It seems the folk at MailOnline didn't check out the photo beforehand. As they didn't with a photo posted on Twitter during Hurricane Isaac in August. And as they didn't with a photo posted on Twitter of the 'Essex lion'.

The 'pelican with TWO HEADS'

MailOnline reports:

A two-headed pelican? We're told by Snejana Farberov:

Two heads are always better than one, the saying goes, although one feathered fowl may disagree.

A pelican that appears to have two heads was captured in flight over the Danube River by a lucky Ukrainian photographer earlier this month.

The image was taken by Vladimir Kucherenko in the Danube Delta, Europe's largest and best preserved delta which is a host to 300 species of birds...

This is not the first time this phenomenon has been seen among the winged representatives of the animal kingdom.

Here's the pic of 'this phenomenon', as it appears on MailOnline:

The majority of the comments on the story are, unsurprisingly, critical of the Mail ("Can I have a job with DM please? Clearly, it's quite easy and your reporters can write any old unverified rubbish," says logical15).

(Hat-tip to Arnold)

MailOnline removes two-year-old photo from Euro 2012 article

Last week, MailOnline removed fake photos from articles about the 'Essex lion' and Tropical Storm Isaac after publishing them without appropriate checks on their accuracy.

In July, they removed a photo from an article about Polish football fans and Euro 2012:

A photograph depicting knives confiscated from Polish football hooligans has been removed from the article after we were informed that the photograph was taken in 2010 and was unrelated to Euro 2012. The article has also been amended to make it clearer to the reader that the images of the Polish police were taken during an operation ahead of the tournament.

Mail and Sun websites publish fake lion pic

The image of Tropical Storm Isaac (that wasn't) was not the only occasion today when MailOnline published - without checks - a photo it found on Twitter, which it then deleted. 

They also ran this photo in an article on the 'Essex lion':

(apologies for the poor quality screenshot)

The article claimed it had the:

Image that sparked police hunt for big cat in Essex town

and said:

Photo passed around social networking site believed to be lion

The article began:

This is believed to be the first picture of the lion on the loose which has sparked a huge police hunt for the beast.

The image - which has been widely distributed on Twitter - is thought to show the beast behind a car in a residential area in Basildon, Essex.

The Sun also ran the pic, under the headline: 'First photo of lion on loose in Essex':

(apologies for the poor quality screenshot)

Both use the phrase 'lion on the loose' as if that was fact.

But the image used was fake. According to Marcus Edwards from Channel 4 News, the same photoshopped pic did the rounds last year during the riots, when a big cat was said to have escaped from London Zoo. Like the 'Essex lion' story, that was also nonsense.

The most recent MailOnline article now says:

It has emerged that an image believed to show the lion which was widely viewed online was in fact a fake.

Essex police warned that 'several doctored photographs are in circulation through social networking sites and other media forums'.

And officers said one night-time picture in circulation showing the silhouette of what looked like a lion, was 'never one that police were examining'.

The image - which was widely distributed on Twitter - was thought to show the beast behind a car in a residential area in Basildon, Essex.

'Widely distributed on Twitter'. But MailOnline forgets to mention its own, rather prominent use of the 'first picture of the lion on the loose'. 

MailOnline fooled by fake Isaac photo

MailOnline reports on the progress of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac:

The first photo they use to illustrate their article is certainly dramatic. But is it genuine? And is it Isaac?

They have credited it to 'Twitter/Seven_marine'. But that Twitter account has not been updated since March 2011.

A quick search of Google Images finds that photo used on many blogs before Isaac, including this one from August 2010 and this one from 2008.

According to Bay News 9:

the photo has been around for many years and seems to pop up every time a severe weather situation arises.

"It is a Photoshopped picture of a supercell thunderstorm that seems to pop up with a new foreground every time there is a hurricane threat anywhere," Bay News 9 Meteorologist Josh Linker said.

"I've seen versions of that photo since at least 2005," Bay News 9 Meteorologist Brian McClure added.

Yet, according to the caption on 'newspaper website of the year' MailOnline, the photo is:

Ominous: Tropical storm Isaac gathers pace as it barrels towards the Gulf coast, where it is expected to hit by Wednesday - the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Journalist Jonathan Haynes says:

Cannot believe how many news websites see something on Twitter and publish it without basic checks on its validity. Utterly depressing. 

(Hat-tip to Jonathan Haynes).

UPDATE: MailOnline updated their article and removed the fake photo at 7.11pm, less than an hour after a link to the above was posted on Twitter. 

Another photo error...

Twenty minutes after this blog tweeted this...

...the Daily Star changed the picture, and added an apostrophe to the headline.

Express and Mirror illustrate British Olympic success...with photos of the Dutch

The front page of today's Daily Express - the self-proclaimed 'World's Greatest Newspaper' - celebrates Team GB's success at the Olympics. Under the headline '22 CARAT GOLD', the paper says:

Jubliant Team GB was celebrating a sensational Olympic record last night – notching up a glorious total of 22 gold medals.

Sir Chris Hoy rounded off another astonishing day for Britain’s athletes as they scooped four more golds.

There were other triumphs in cycling and dressage and the gruelling triathlon.

They decided to put pictures of all these gold medallists on the front page:

Unfortunately, rather than the gold-medal winning British dressage team, the Express has published a photo of the third-placed Dutch team:

And the Express wasn't the only one - the Mirror used photos of the Dutch team on page seven and on their centre pages (photo from Nick Sutton):

According to Roy Greenslade, Getty sent out the photo wrongly-tagged. But did no-one at the Mirror or Express notice the bright orange collars or the not-very-gold medals and wonder if it was the right team?

(Thanks to Antonia, Martin, Chris and others)