On Sept. 30, 2000, 10 Palestinians were killed across the West Bank and Gaza Strip during rioting, ostensibly in response to Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. One of those 10 would become an icon: Mohammad al-Durrah. His posthumous celebrity sprang from a videotape of his apparent murder by Israeli soldiers. The shocking video showed al-Durrah cowering in terror behind his father as bullets ended his life.

In many ways it was the perfect picture and story for the press. Every storyline percolating across the wires was captured in one awful image: indiscriminate Israelis, helpless Palestinians and horrifyingly brutal bloodshed viscerally brought together. Within hours the video had been replayed endlessly on TV, and the image had been plastered on the front page of many newspapers. The picture quickly inflamed world opinion against Israel and helped instigate the Second Intifada.

Yet if a story seems too perfect to be true, it probably is.

Despite what seemed to be incontrovertible proof, this “Palestinian pieta” was a lie. Al-Durrah is pronounced dead by cameraman Talal Abu Rahma before being shot. Several forensic investigations have strongly suggested that aimed fire from Israeli positions could not possibly have hit the boy and his father. Claims made by the reporter about the contents of the footage have proven to be “total inventions.” Most damningly, every other second of video shot by Rahma that day is indisputably fauxtography, i.e., faked scenes of bloodshed and destruction intended to mold media coverage. The facts simply do not mesh with the unequivocal media narrative.

The case faded from sight and mind as new barbarities rose to take its place in the public eye. It was recently thrust back into the spotlight, however, when France 2, which initially aired the video, sued some of those who criticized the reporting. While the specifics of this tragic whodunit are interesting, the bigger issue here is our ability to separate fact from fiction in everyday life. We often cannot believe until we see: photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony are equated with absolute fact. We run into trouble, however, when we unwittingly bear witness to a magician’s act.

The illusionists of fauxtography have created a powerful tool for propaganda. Faking a photo is a simple and effective means of propaganda, and an image once implanted is all but impossible to remove. Complex ballistic trajectories are boring and will always be trumped by a picture of a dead child. My roommate had no clue who al-Durrah was, but he certainly remembered “that kid and his dad who got shot.”

When the news media looks for facts to fit the story instead of a story to fit the facts, everyone is worse off. That was the case when reporters fit allegations of rape by the Duke lacrosse team into a nonexistent broader context even though at least one of the accused is demonstrably innocent. It was the case when stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq went all but unchallenged. It is probably the case now that every reporter knows for certain that Iraq is spiraling out of control.

The harm done in these instances of excessive media credulity has been immense. Instead of limited rioting, Israel and Palestine fought a bloody war, in large part because of the al-Durrah incident. The United States invaded Iraq because the original rationale was not seriously challenged. It may now withdraw into chaos because the current storyline of defeat is unquestioningly accepted. Israel signed an unsatisfying cease fire in Lebanon mainly because of international horror at exaggerated atrocities, such as at Houla where the actual death toll was 2.5 percent of the original claim.

In a media culture of variable reality, what can we be sure of? Certainly not the artificially smoky Beirut of Adnan Hajj, the suspiciously intact photo albums on top of burning rubble or the destroyed ambulances that appear to have been worked over with baseball bats and not missiles – all examples of fauxtography unmasked during Israel’s recent war with Hezbollah. What news can we trust when the media defends fake evidence as long as it fits a preconceived “reality of the situation” Participatory democracy is dependant on free access to the facts. A society based upon the popular will is bound to fail if public opinion is shaped by incorrect evidence. Garbage in, garbage out. As for me, I’ll take my news with a pound of salt and trust my instincts over manufactured “reality.”

Barry Caro is a sophomore from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.