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Is Seeing Believing

Is Seeing Believing: Politics

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Townhall Magazine Cover Original photo



Doctored photo

Arizona GOP Runs Doctored Cigarette Photo of President Obama

Original photo

 

 

from Poynter.org (Feb 4, 2009)
Recently we witnessed one of the most documented events in history with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Frommost every angle, historic moments were captured.
Documentary photography is a powerful tool — we’re talking about real events in real time.
Why then, with all of the photo choices available to news organizations last week, would an image need to be manipulated?

One such image, taken by McClatchy-Tribune photographer Chuck Kennedy at the foot of the inaugural podium, was altered to extend the sky in at least two U.S. publications — presumably to allow room for words to run over the photo. Those pixels were not a part of the original image.

 

 

TIME magazine cover: November 14, 2008 Original FDR Photo

 

 

Palinshotgunpool_2 September 2008
This photo, purported to be GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin,
was making its way across the WWW..But alas it too is a
digital manipulation…details here
See also:Photoshop for Democracy Revisited: The Sarah Palin File

 

March 2008:  This kind of thing is becoming more common: shouldn’t it be critical for people to be discriminating
and skeptical viewers and thinkers?  Full story here
Fakereal

 

 

Questions Raised About Darkening of Obama in Hillary Ad  (March 6, 2008)

 

A controversial new Hillary Clinton attack ad is causing an Internet stir among critics who claim it deliberately darkens Barack Obama’s skin color.A posting on the liberal site DailyKos.com shows side-by-side screen grabs of Barack Obama taken during a debate with Clinton in Cleveland last week. The screen grab used in the Clinton ad shows a clearly darker-skinned Obama, prompting some to wonder if it was done to highlight his race.


January 19, 2008
This image of U.S. House candidate and former Sugar Land mayor Dean Hrbacek is actually his head on another man's body. Photo: HANDOUTSource:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/19/doctored.photo.ap/index.html
and
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5465451.html

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) — A mailer from a congressional candidate’s campaign contains a photo of his head attached to an image of a different body that makes him look thinner.

Dean Hrbacek’s flier shows his head on another’s body.

The photo is presented as a true image of Dean Hrbacek, a Republican former mayor of Sugar Land, Texas. In reality, it is a computerized composite of Hrbacek’s face and someone else’s slimmer figure, in suit and tie, from neck to knee.

Hrbacek, a tax lawyer and accountant, did not immediately return a call to his campaign headquarters Friday by The Associated Press. He is seeking the nomination to run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson.

Campaign manager Scott Broschart acknowledged to The Houston Chronicle that the image is a fake. Hrbacek has been so busy that he had no time to pose for a full-length photo for the mailing, Broschart said.

“He may appreciate that we took a few pounds off him,” Broschart said. “I think the voters … are more concerned with the issues as opposed to pretty photo shoots.”

Republican political consultant Allen Blakemore of Houston, who has no client in the congressional race, said there’s no law against the practice “other than the laws of gravity — the negative effect on your polling numbers and popularity when you do such things.”

 

 

Doctored portraits show fake police mug shots of President Bush and other top White House officials in political satire art on display at main branch of New York Public Library. Today’s photo: Public library displays fake Bush ‘mug shot’
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/11/todays-photo–1.html
This image, captured from a

YouTube video, is one of six doctored mug shots by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese that are on display at the New York Public Library in Manhattan.
As the
Daily News says in its story about the controversy surrounding these images: “The photos are more post office than public library, more big house than White House … Not everyone was amused by the pointed political satire.”
Critics say the images shouldn’t be displayed at a public library that derives some of its revenue from the government. But the library, in a statement, denies that the exhibition amounts to an anti-war statement.
“This exhibition has no political agenda,” the library says, according to

Fox News. “The work described in the media has been presented out of context and is not a complete or fair representation of the entire exhibition — which showcases 23 different contemporary printmakers from around the world, featuring a range of subject matters.”
The controversial photos are included a $6 book by
pure products usa called “Line Up: The Unofficial Portraits.” “All in all, there are seven black and white portraits bearing the date and location when each betrayed the public’s trust,” the artists say on their website.
The Daily News has a
photo gallery
.

 

 

 

(AP) February 27, 2007 As President Bush smiled and waved from the stands and Mickey Mantle looked on from the dugout, Derek Jeter swung his bat. Talk about pressure. Luckily, the game never happened. It was just someone’s idea of a visual gag _ pulled off in a recent Topps baseball card through digital manipulation.

“Somewhere in between the final proofing and its printing, someone at our company _ and we won’t name names _ thought it would be funny to put in Bush and Mantle,” said Clay Luraschi, a spokesman for Topps in Tuesday’s edition of the Daily News. (link)

 

Bush campaign (Oct.28, 2004) is accused of manipulating photo for use
in subsequent political campaign commercial. See original photo, followed
by altered image with indications of manipulations.


http://www.dod.mil/news/Jul2002/200207198b.jpg 


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/27/22442/878

 

John Kerry/Jane Fonda

1971 Photo of John Kerry Doctored
Kerry Photo, A Big Lie, Fonda Says

See  photos  here

NY Times Lesson Plan:
Photo Forgery
Getting to the Heart of a
Photojournalist’s Code of Ethics



Photo appearing to show US presidential candidate John Kerry with

Photo appearing to show US presidential hopeful John Kerry sharing the stage with “Hanoi” Jane Fonda at an anti-Vietnam war rally in the early 1970s

Anti war rally picture exposed as fake

How the camera can distort the truth

Doctored Kerry photo brings anger, threat of suit
Software

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