In the past week, both Wired Magazine and Reuters were alerted to cleaver media fakers in their midst. The authenticity of sources for an article written for Wired by freelancer Philip Chen were questioned when it was discovered that the IP adddresses of a Usenet posting praising Chen, and an email from an individual quoted in the article were the same. Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj after Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs figured out the plume of smoke eminating from a bomed building in Lebanon was far too symetrical to be real.

Mark Hamilton turns his critical eye on the media's reactions to these two new scandals and believes the failings of individuals does not dictate the failings of the media industry: "Let’s get real, and get over this. The individual failing of one person, usually enabled by laxness on the part of higher-ups, isn’t great news but neither is it the end of the world nor an indication of some deep, dark conspiracy nor a telling indicator of the overall failings of media nor an example of standard operating principles nor anything else as grand and sweeping...Turning each individual failing into a symbol for grand, overall failing is just plain silly."