with all respect, two policemen looking at a computer screen is hardly an “oppression” image. this is hardly stock photo usage “gone wrong”. this is exactly how stock images are used: illustratively. they wanted to show a. a policeman, b. a chinese policeman and c. a computer. they didn’t claim anything else anywhere in any caption.

what’s offensive about the picture anyway?

the only busting here is that of anti-cnn for being idiots who would grab at burning, electrified straws, if they could.

Seriously, Tom, I can’t believe you - who should be more familiar with how ’stock photographs’ are used (at any rate, more familiar than the prickly morons at anti-CNN) - used word ‘busted’.

Stock photographs of the sort that BBC has used here are pulled out as visual accompaniments to stories when no ‘news pictures’ are readily available; they make no claim to being news photographs. Sure, BBC could have tagged the photograph as file picture, but that it didn’t isn’t a crime.

Coming as it does from a media culture where photographs are routinely photoshopped to crop out inconvenient leaders, it’s a bit rich. But for you to take this forward and claim that the BBC has been ‘busted’ by anti-CNN is doubly tragic.

You want ‘busted’? This one comes close:

Just came across this link on Blogdai

http://nepalnow.blogspot.com/2008/05/no-summit-for-china.html

Not offering it as conclusive proof, but honestly there’s far more ‘busting’ going on there than here…

@Cerebus, @Shijiern

Yes, stock photography has a place, but come on, an 8 year old image?

I think it is great when readers - even the anti-CNN crowd - hold the media and bloggers accountable for inaccuracies.

I would argue that at some point a stock photo itself becomes misleading and inaccurate.

This just shows how rabid the anti-cnn mob is. They’ll grab onto any ‘mistake’ as indicative the evil of western oppressors.