HonestReporting's latest communique entitled Time Magazine Gets Caught Lying contains the usual distortion and general dishonesty that permeate most of their communiques.

This communique concerns a Time Magazine caption on a photo taken by Bruno Stevens during the recent war in Lebanon. HR states that Time's caption "Deliberately contradict[s] the photographer's account of events" and that Time accepted "the claims of a terrorist organization over that of its own photographer".

Sounds serious. Let's start by looking at the captions.

Here is the caption that Stevens sent along with his photograph: "Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 An Israeli Air Force F16 has alledgedly been shot down while bombing a group of Hezbollah owned trucks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher."

Here is the caption that Time actually printed: "The wreckage of a downed Israeli jet that was targeting Hizballah trucks billows smoke behind a Hizballah gunman in Kfar Chima, near Beirut. Jet fuel set the surrounding area ablaze."

So far, so good. Those are essentially the same.

Sometime, at a later date, the photographer updated his caption and removed references to the downed Israeli jet. HR is upset that Time didn't (or wasn't able to) use this updated caption and instead, based their printed caption on the original. (Believe it or not, but this is the "lie" HR is referring to) Naturally, HR assumes that Time deliberately ignored the updated caption. HR tries to convince their readers of this by stating that "Stevens quickly followed up and clarified that the destruction he photographed" wasn't a downed Israeli jet.

How does HR know that Stevens "quickly followed up" with the updated caption? Stevens doesn't specifically mention when he updated the caption. On Lightstalkers, he states that the caption was updated only after going back to the site three more times and collecting more evidence. Stevens does not state how many days it took him to do this. For HR to describe this as "quickly" is a gross misrepresentation.

Sadly, this gross misrepresentation was necessary for HR, because if they didn't do it, their communique would simply fall apart. It's absolutely critical that their communique give the impression that Time Magazine received the updated caption very soon after receiving the original. It wouldn't do Time much good if they received Stevens' updated caption after the magazine went to print.

In addition to deceiving its readers about the timing of the updated caption, HR also fabricates the existence of a conflict between Stevens and Time Magazine. HR states that Steven's "anger at having his caption changed can be read on Lightstalkers." Unfortunately for HR, the only "anger" that Stevens shows on Lightstalkers is at an individual named "Guilad", who has been erroneously claiming that Steven's photo is that of a garbage dump burning. Guilad has even accused Stevens of being antisemitic and anti-Israeli (Imagine that). Stevens mentions absolutely nothing about any "anger at having his caption changed". The sole purpose for Stevens even writing about this event on Lightstalker was because he was being "defamed and insulted" by Guilad.

It's amazing that HR would need to be so consistently deceptive in order to show anti-Israel bias in the media. Is it really that difficult to find valid examples of it?