Digital Photography Bodes Ill for "News"

I've always been a little skeptical about the sensationalism and obvious bias in much of the news these days, but I was rather surprised to come across several reports of photo manipulation of several images that had caught my eye in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Times over the last few weeks. Here is a site that compiles several of the recent Reuters photo frauds in Lebanon over the last couple of weeks. I suspect that this sort of thing is hardly unique to the Middle East, but sheesh. You can't even believe your eyes anymore. Digital editing, retouching, misleading captions, and staged photos all abound and seem to appear as NEWS in accredited sources generally held as reliable in the US.

Here is but one example from the site. Many of you may have seen the following photo either online or in the paper. It's pretty dramatic stuff, pulling bodies from the rubble and all. It certainly caught my attention when I was perusing the paper the other morning.



Well, check out the following photo from the same roll of film:



Recognize the guy in cap and cammie shorts? Pretty hale and hearty for the "corpse" they pulled from the rubble.