There’s been a lot of discussion in our comments about the latest staged photographs from Reuters and the Associated Press, showing Hamas legislators forced to “meet by candlelight” because of power cuts in Gaza. Mohammed Salem of Reuters and Hatem Moussa of the Associated Press both filed photographs of the meeting—in which you can clearly see drapes that are backlit by bright sunlight outside.

NewsBusters has the photos; they’re so inept I might almost suspect that Salem and Moussa deliberately included the backlit curtains in their shots to cue people in to the propaganda—but this is Reuters and the AP, after all: Reuters Fauxtography Alert: Spreading Hamas Propaganda With Fake Power Outage Photos.

UPDATE at 1/27/08 10:53:00 am:

And by the way, this “candlelight” theme is clearly a coordinated propaganda campaign, because the wire services are currently running dozens of photographs like these:

UPDATE at 1/27/08 11:03:34 am:

Palestinian journalists have now admitted that the staging took place: Palestinian journalists: Hamas staged blackouts.