Add The Citizen of Johannesburg, South Africa to the list of credulous newspapers. They ran the bogus tsunami photo on Jan. 10. The Mail and Guardian promptly blew the whistle. Here's their lead:

The first thing you are taught at journalism school is not to trust anything you see on the internet. The second is to check your sources. ...

"In 2005, newspapers should be far more alert to things like this," Guy Berger, head of the media and journalism department at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Monday.

"When someone offers The Citizen exclusive pictures of a major natural disaster like the tsunami, alarm bells should be ringing. It is not like we were born yesterday."

>Citizen falls into tsunami trap [The Mail and Guardian]

I know you're tired of hearing about that blasted tsunami photo. Criminy, I'm tired of writing about it. And I'd certainly quit, but newspapers persist in putting the damn thing on their front pages, so what can I do?

Today's entry is The Times of India, which ran the photo on Friday's front page. They quickly found out their mistake, posting a short story on their website at 7:44 a.m. Friday (the story ran in the Saturday paper on page 8). The story, which one might note contains no one apologizing, says The Times got the photos from the Press Trust of India, and that PTI got them from a correspondent in Bangalore. The photos are still posted in the PTI's photo report of Jan. 6, with zero cutline information and no indications that there's any question about them.

The Times' cutline even admits they don't know where it came from. I dunno what's happened to people's BS detectors.

>After the deadly tsunami, a photo hoax wave [The Times of India]

OK. One more item (for now) about the Photo That Wouldn't Die. Regarding the Calgary Herald's publication of the photo, Dave Chidley of the London (Ont.) Free Press writes on the Eastern Canadian News Photographers Association message board:

We had access (as did all Sun papers) to the photo the same day and I had discussions with the Photo editor at the Calgary Sun who also acquired the photos at the press conference.

The relief agency apparently had the photo emailed to them and it was assumed to be fresh art. Without any cutline information or legitimate media photographer or agency authenticating it we chose not to run it.

The CTV afflilate CFCN television in Calgary also ran it on their evening news.

It's interesting to see that members of the so called tabloid press erred on the side of caution and the Calgary Herald, Calgary's "paper of record" chose to run a unconfirmed, albeit it, spectacular photo.

It was unclear if the relief agency was using the photo out of ignorance or not.

The lesson would be if there isn't a legitimate "byline" on a piece of journalism than it's likely not legitmate.

>Calgary Herald Tsunami photo?? [ECNPA.com]

Apparently, Calgary's not the only newspaper to be taken in by the bogus tsunami photo. "Tz," a Munich newspaper, ran the photo on their front page (I'm assuming it ran Wednesday; I can't tell from the story and the above image was on their homepage all day). Another German newspaper, Bild, was offered the photos, but was suspicious and declined.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has a story which recounts how it happened.

In the first edition the editorial staff was apparently quite sure about the matter. The pictures from Sri Lanka, it said, "show how the tsunami reaches the bank." "Wild panic: People flee to their cars before imminent danger," a second picture was described. In the next edition the Munich newspaper was already somewhat more careful: "These pictures are circulating on the Internet," it said, and: "Allegedly they show the tsunami of 26 December 2004."

"We have published a picture that makes clear the disasters of this world," says tz deputy editor-in-chief Rudolf Bögel upon inquiry. It was not claimed that it was about the current disaster.

A full (very rough) translation of the German article (which kindly mentions this site but gives me rather too much credit in sussing out the Calgary matter, which was done by Robb Montgomery and Nicole Bogdas) is after the jump.

Also, alert reader Brian Cubbison points out that Sky News and Channel 9 in Australia were both taken in by the photos.

>Die falsche Welle [FAZ.NET]
>Networks fooled by fake tsunami pictures [Crikey.com.au]

Even after the Calgary Herald's goof and apology, the above image and several others have making their viral way around the 'net, showing up on weblogs, message boards , even reportedly appearing on AOL's startup page and an Australian television network. It's hard to say where these things start, but a good guess might be somebody named Corey Koberg. Somewhere around Dec. 29, Koberg put up a bunch of dramatic shots, saying "These were taken by my former roommate's co-worker who was visiting Thailand." The site was quickly linked by a lot of people, including Instapundit (who quickly corrected himself) and, as recently as yesterday, the estimable BoingBoing.net (who still haven't corrected themselves).

Even though he's still getting approving links, Koberg's apparently feeling the e-mail heat. He's edited the sentence about the photos' provenance to say "These were forwarded to my (sic) by a friend, supposedly taken by a co-worker's friend who was visiting Thailand." And he's added an update to the page that says: "I've gotten tons of emails with opinions on the origins of these photos, although nothing which has conclusively proven it one way or another (despite adamant claims)."

Well, here's a September 16, 2002, page with the fleeing people image and what appears to be the original wire service cutline: "Spectators "flee" as huge waves of the Qiantangjiang River approach in east China's Zhejiang Province Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002. Huge tides occurred as Typhoon Sinlaku swept through the southern part of the East China Sea at 5:00 a.m. since last Saturday, with the maximum wind force of 40 meters per second. (AP Photo/Zhan Xiadong, XINHUA)". And here's Archive.org's archive of the Sept. 13, 2002, Drudge Report, which contains the image. And, just for overkill, here's some contemporaneous banter in the National Review's blog, The Corner, about Drudge's link.

Also, Snopes weighed in today with the determination that they're old photos from China.

Looks a lot like proof to me.

*Update: Koberg's come around. He says "Aaron R. has succeeded in proving to me that the pictures are not of the tsunami in Asia." And then says: "In the end time&place are only slightly relevant.  The original point of the images was to show the kinetic power of large masses of water, which is certainly still true." Sure! Facts, schmacts! An earthquake and tsunami and a couple hundred thousand dead people, a tidal bore and a few dozen wet people, the difference is only "slightly relevant"! It's all about the kinetics!

*Update2: Damon Kiesow, manager of photography for AOL, e-mails that the photos were never used on AOL's startup page or anywhere else on the service. They knew of the photos, but determined they weren't real. Obviously, I should have checked that out before publishing. I apologize for the error.

*Update3: Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing says that the link above was accidentally published instead of saved as a draft pending fact check. It was deleted within 5 seconds, she says, but it still went out on the RSS feeds. The post is no longer in the BB January archives, but for some reason you still get it if you go directly to the permalink. She says, and I quote, "Arrrgh!"

The Calgary Herald apologized on its front page today for yesterday's foul-up.

The media were incorrectly told this photo, along with others provided by the Calgary-based World Job and Food Bank, was from the recent tsunami disaster in south Asia. Several media outlets, including the Calgary Herald, Global news and CFCN TV used the photos.

That's quite a tsunami photo the Calgary Herald has there on today's front page. Problem is, it turns out it's not from this tsunami.

VisualEditors.com guru Robb Montgomery posted the page this afternoon and wondered if the photo was real. Many had suspicions, because it hadn't moved on the wires and it looked a bit like it might have been Photoshopped. But Nicole Bogdas of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel enlisted a photo editor and actually did a little legwork:

Here's the story: This is a two-year-old Reuters photo of a tsunami in China. You might remember the event: a bunch of people went to watch the waves and it turned out to be bigger than they thought. Anyway, the doctor gave the photo to the mayor of Calgary--he'd saved it for fundraising purposes. The Mayor showed it during a presentation on tsunami aid and the herald asked if they could have it thinking it was from this tsunami. Apparently their director of photography wasn't on last night.

Nothing on the Herald's website yet.

*Update: They've apologized.

*Update2: Welcome to everyone from whatreallyhappened.com and everywhere else. I have made several related posts to this in the past week. They can be found collected here.

>Is this a real photo? [VisualEditors.com]