"Gawker," the "source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip," brings to our attention this correction from The New York Times. It’s a lulu, and boy, do they owe Mark Warner an apology.
Before I had seen that blog post or the correction, I had seen the magazine, and it had practically knocked me over with its apparently deliberate cosmetic assassination of the Virginia governor.
I saw it lying on a shelf behind the door — therefore in relative darkness — in the editorial conference room just before our morning meeting, and it drew me to it immediately with its incredibly vivid ugliness. I swear, before I picked it up, I thought it was a full-color, artfully painted caricature meant to represent some stereotype of the ultimate untrustworthy face. The shifty used car salesman type, or a blogger, or whatever.
I was shocked when I picked it up and saw it was not only meant to portray a real person, but was an actual photograph — albeit a brutally unrealistic Photoshopped distortion of the original. Color, brightness, contrast and proportion were all extremely unrealistic looking. (Of course, I suppose proportion would have been distorted when the picture was taken, via lens selection.)
It just made you think, What do the photo editors of this magazine have against this man? This is not what he looks like. Are they trying to kill his presidential chances before he gets started?
My colleague Mike Fitts remarked that Mr. Warner wasn’t going to win "Hillary’s state" anyway. But you know, the NYT is read far beyond that.
Now, for those who had trouble following the links, here is what the correction said in the Times:
The cover photograph in The Times Magazine on Sunday rendered colors incorrectly for the jacket, shirt and tie worn by Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor who is a possible candidate for the presidency. The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.
The Times’s policy rules out alteration of photographs that depict actual news scenes and, even in a contrived illustration, requires acknowledgment in a credit. In this case, the film that was used can cause colors to shift, and the processing altered them further; the change escaped notice because of a misunderstanding by the editors.
Film? What kind of film? Infrared? I mean, the man’s teeth glowed in the dark. They were all I saw when I first glanced at it.
Gawker, which appropriately named this the "Correction of the Week," added this further observation:
Also, Warner’s teeth have not been capped and whitened, his lower lip isn’t doing that weird thing, and he doesn’t actually give off that smarmy politician vibe that made you turn over the magazine on your coffee table so you didn’t have to keep looking at him. It’s all just a misunderstanding.
I’m sure the Times would have said that, too, if they’d had a little more room. Aren’t you?
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Brad,
The manipulated image is very interesting. It does not cast the Times in a good light. There is a faculty member at Dartmouth, Prof. Hany Farid, whose research specialty is digital imaging. He has a fascinating link on his website to an archive of famous digitally altered photos, like TV Guide’s unauthorized cover photo with Oprah’s head on Anne-Margaret’s body (if only we could have heard that editor’s thoughts when that photo was ordered up) or the famous John Kerry/Jane Fonda composite from the last presidential campaign. You may enjoy looking at it.
If the links didn’t carry through, Prof. Farid’s homepage is:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/
and the link to the altered photo archive is:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/
Brad, how can anyone be shocked as you stated you were when a paper that is notorious for dishonesty, propaganda, and anti-Americanism distorts a photograph to denigrate one possible candidate who will compete against the socialist Hillary Clinton? This is nothing more than the Times, as well as most of the rest of leftist media, doing what they do best. Examples:
Jayson Blair, Abu Graib on the front page over 50 times, exposure of classified top secret data on how WE are tracking and combatting terrorists who want to kill Americans, CBS presenting forged documents to take down the president, NBC faking an auto explosion to distort vehicle safety, premature and dead wrong calling of Florida for Gore in 2000 while purposely NOT reporting WV and Tennessee going Bush in effort to influence West Coast voters, the list is nearly endless. The Times has the dubious distinction of cheerleading the Adolf Hitler regime pre-WW2 and reporting that attacks and roundups of Jews were nothing more than rumor and heresay.
Nothing that the Slimes does shocks me. As Col. Renault said in Casablanca, “I am shocked, shocked I say, to find that gambling is going on in here.”
The ethics of alterations should be self-evident, but sometimes in the rush to publish, ethics are push aside.
I don’t know if this is what happened at the Times, but there are other instances in which photo editors push the envelope in the name of expediency: Witness a few years ago of the joining of skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in a photo published by Long Island Newsday. Both appeared as if “all is forgiven” following the clubbing of Kerrigan’s legs. Not true. The photo editor wanted to have both appear in the same picture and joined separate pictures into one. But as the photo editor later remarked, “I looked at the paper (and the picture the next morning) on my porch and said, uh, ho, it’s not right.”
And even though the the other poster wanted to vent (welcome to blogland) about the Times, such staid publications as The National Geographic have been guilty of alteration: On a cover, editors placed the Egyptian pyramids close to one another to fit on the cover. Not true, they confessed.
Papers and mags are as good as they portray the truth. When they alter it, or fudge it for whatever reason (in the case of Warner), then the correction is usually messy and laughable.
But there is the time when the NY Times photo editor lost his job when he chose a picture of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio giving a rather sloppy kiss to his then wife, Marilyn Monroe(as reported by writer Gay Talese).
Bill, some thoughts from that other blogger. Nancy Kerrigan, the pyramids, and Joe DiMaggio were not running for a political office. See Brad’s original contention or question for background. Anyway, blogs are for venting, among other things, at least I thought. How could anyone fire anyone over a picture of Marilyn Monroe?
To All – Here is an alert I got from a pal re: a key vote in the US House today the 16th. (I think) Not surprisingly, the NY Times would like to continue to snuff out the First Amendment rights that we all should cherish
March 15, 2006
The elites have become afraid of you. Whether they are in Washington,
Moscow, Beijing, Paris or Sydney, the political and media elites are afraid
you will eventually know too much and say too much. Which is why they are
determined to control the Internet in whatever ways they can.
Tomorrow afternoon, the U.S. House will vote on the Online Freedom of
Speech Act (H.R. 1606). We strongly urge a “yes” vote, as do organizations
such as Gun Owners of America, National Taxpayers Union, National Right to
Life Committee, Family Research Council, National Rifle Association, and
American Conservative Union.
H.R. 1606 is needed because federal courts have ordered the Federal
Election Commission to regulate “electioneering communications” on the
Internet because of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act
(McCain-Feingold). If H.R. 1606 fails to become law, your Web site or blog
could be shut down for the 30 days prior to a primary election and the 60
days prior to a general election should you express “electioneering
communications.” And any political e-mail you send during those times
supporting or denouncing a candidate could also be disallowed.
So, grass-roots political activism will be silenced. But the media elite,
such as the New York Times, won’t be muzzled because they are exempt as
members of the “official press.” They will be allowed to continue writing
editorials about various candidates, but you won’t have approval from the
State to say a word.
By the way, The New York Times has an editorial today urging a “no” vote on
H.R. 1606.
The vote will be held tomorrow afternoon. Please urge your U.S.
representative to vote “yes” on H.R. 1606.
To send your message, go to
http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/alert/?alertid=8585676&type=CO
Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
Dave,
A Black Heli followed me home from work today.
I threw them off by running over an exit sign. (You know that they’ve got coded messages for the UN on the exit signs, don’t you?)
Wait. Someone’s knocking at the door.
No, NO… please don’t make me live on Dave’s World!
I’d rather die tha
RTH – Yes,
They’r coming to take you away, ho ho,
They’r coming to take you away, hee hee,
Ho,ho, hee, hee
Put your tinfoil hat on quick. Before they get you.
As if anyone needed any further evidence that the NY Times will do anything at any time to undermine the American military and the current administration, see this “correction” from the Slimes,of course it was NOT put on the front page of the filthy traitorous rag.
Editors’ Note
A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.
The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi’s insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi’s account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.
Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi’s claim.
The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.
Captain Ed’s take on the NYTcorrection:
As for the shading of Warner’s ensemble, Powerline’s readers assert that it’s either a well-known artifact of Photoshop color correction or the intentional use of the wrong film per an interesting column in the New York Observer. In either case, the NYT’s correction is not quite correct.
As a matter of fact, it WAS infrared film:
“According to Times Magazine photo editor Kathy Ryan, Mr. Hay used an infrared chrome film, originally designed for 70-millimeter movie cameras, that changes hues when processed in the darkroom.”
I think that red-state people emit more heat than light so the choice of film was appropriate.