A couple of years ago one of the guys at the firehouse was showing me how to use Photoshop. I needed to learn some simple skills – specifically how to erase license plates from MVA photos I wanted to send to the press. As a result of boredom over the lesson the famed “sock on fire” trick photo shot was created.
It’s pretty funny when you look at some of the altered images people create with programs like Photoshop, but it is no laughing matter when the press or a news source uses these tools to create something that isn’t really there.
I remember a PR seminar I went to a few years back about the dangers of altering photo’s to slant a news story. Back in 2006 a Reuters photographer took it upon himself to alter a photo of an Israeli air attack on Beirut. As you can see the picture was photo shopped to make the incident appear worse than it actually was. After condemnation of Reuters, the news service put into place strict guidelines about the altering of original photo’s.
Speed ahead to last month. The June 19th issue of the Economist featured a cover image of President Obama standing on a beach in Louisiana, looking down in deep thought and seemingly pondering, as President, the enormous responsibility he has of how to make things bearable once again for those who are suffering though this disaster.
However, that’s not what the picture is actually about. It is deceiving. A New York Times article recently reported that the Economist modified the cover image which was shot by a Reuters photographer.
The unaltered image, shot on May 28 by a Reuters photographer, Larry Downing, shows Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local Parish President, standing alongside the President. But in the image that appeared on The Economist’s cover, Admiral Allen and Randolph had been scrubbed out, replaced by the blue water of the Gulf of Mexico.
In an email, Economist deputy editor Emma Duncan told the Times that Admiral Allen was removed by the crop, and that Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the picture because no one knew who she was. Duncan claims that goal was not to isolate President Obama, but to have readers focus on him while the article examines the oil spills damage to business in America, not the President.
Was the picture cropped and altered to make the President look rock solid in his handling of the spill, or was it true that the photo included non familiar faces that were of little interest to readers?
In either case, this is a question we should not be pondering at all. The altering of this picture is a dangerous precedent in allowing a media outlet to editorialize through the use of something that never really happened.
Also on The Fire PIO…
- PowerPoint not needed to make the Point – September 22, 2010
- Press Releases are not dead in our neck of the woods – September 15, 2010
- Hyperlocal News is Growing – September 21, 2010
- Do we have Robots running the country? – December 13, 2010
No Comments