Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Who's Ho?

Credit Ho New (Reuters) 
Screen shot of the offending item taken from ABC Environment's Site 25/10/2011
We have had some fun with ABC environment's woeful attempt to automatically link news headlines to stock images (see this effort for instance), however this time the incompetence relates to attribution of a photo in an opinion piece on its website (shown above).

The correct attribution is shown below in an article from MSNBC. As to who "Ho New" is, we asked Reuters and they indicated the Ho refers to "Handout".
Attribution of MSNBC article reads "Dennis Sarrazin  /  ArcticNet/Centre d'Etudes Nordiques"

You can see more amazing photos by Dennis Sarrazin at his page at the Centre d'Etudes Nordiques. The photo ABC incorrectly credited to a "Handout" from Reuters was taken in on the 20/08/2008 and shows Disraeli fjord, Ellesmere Island, Northern Canada. In Dennis Sarrazin's slideshow it's about the 20th photo in.

In regard to the content of the op ed piece, if you look up "Alarmist" in the dictionary it now simply shows a Lissajous curve. In regard to its author, based on a recent critique by Roger Pielke Jnr, I believe the label "cherry picker" is appropriate.

Update from Reuters received 29/10/2011:
Thanks for the note, and sorry for the delay. The HO is actually an internal code which is added to a picture when its put into our archive. It most likely was a technical glitch.


No, just ABC incompetence.

1 comment:

  1. "Second time that Arctic sea ice levels have melted this much." One thing about their ABC, they certainly don't let facts or objectivity interfere with the opportunity to spin a bit more climate alarm. No surprise that the basis for this masterpiece is from Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, arguably Germany's No 1 alarmist and alarmist organisation respectively.

    Strangely there are a few of us that were around back in the 1950's and can recall when US submarines made the news when they visited an "ice free North Pole."
    Or if one looks back a little further, 6000 or 7000 years, there are indications that the Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.

    ReplyDelete

Please keep to the topic. Abusive comments and bad language are simply not tolerated. Note that your comment may take a little while to appear.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.