Israel’s Government Press Office called a special meeting with the heads of several foreign news agencies recently, to issue a warning about the biased, staged, and outright phony news and photographs that were epidemic in the Lebanon war: GPO warns press on doctored photos.

The Government Press Office held a meeting with heads of foreign news agencies earlier this month to protest the doctoring of photographs of the recent Lebanon war and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, and warned them that action could be taken against them if this practice continued, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The director of the Government Press Office, Danny Seaman, told the Post Israel reserved the right to act against any media outlets working out of Israel if they “fail to conduct themselves in a professional manner.”

The foreign journalists’ coverage of the Lebanon war was discussed, with the meeting focused on doctored photographs used by news agencies, Seaman said.

“This was something new to the world, but we’ve seen it before,” he said. “We expect them to take precautions in the future. If they are not taking the necessary measures to maintain professional standards then we reserve the right to take action against their offices in Israel.”

The GPO cannot act directly against foreign press services, but it can make recommendations to the Communications, Foreign and Defense ministries, Seaman said.

The only action taken by the government against the news agencies during the recent war was to send complaints to their main offices.

Seaman spoke of staged photos from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, such as people standing in front of destroyed homes and falsely claiming ownership and instances in which photographers asked people to “recreate” reported incidents. He also said Palestinian photographers would sometimes tell children to throw rocks or have adults carry children pretending to be injured.

He also referred to photos making damage in Lebanon appear worse than it actually was.

After American Web blogs publicized the doctoring of a Reuters photograph, Reuters put the freelance photographer on leave and removed the photo from its Web site. The photograph showed a smoky, bombed area in southern Beirut. While the area had been hit in IAF air raids, the photographer added billows of smoke and additional damage to buildings using computer-imaging technology.

I know it must be awfully hard for mainstream journalists to credit something called “Little Green Footballs” for breaking a story, but it would have been nice.