Time for yet another blogger ethics panel: the very serious Economist magazine photoshops a picture of Barack Obama (via) to make him look more alone and depressed, a la Jimmy Carter.
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by DougJ| 139 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, We Are All Mayans Now
Time for yet another blogger ethics panel: the very serious Economist magazine photoshops a picture of Barack Obama (via) to make him look more alone and depressed, a la Jimmy Carter.
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fucen tarmal
ah economists missed out on the whole “irrational behavior” thing, and the role of emotions in decision making for the last 30 years while they concocted perfect formulas, i guess they are playing catch up.
its kind of cute when nerds try to be evocative,
homerhk
The media in the US is aiding and abetting scams being perpetrated against the US public. Sadly, most of the US public are also complicit.
homerhk
Actually I take it back about the US media – the Economist is an English magazine AFAIK so maybe it’s just the media in general.
Elizabelle
Yup, all alone in his toxic soshulism on that beach.
And redder too, if that photo’s to be believed.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Between Obama being lonely and Jimma Carter, and the wingnuts launching their secret weapon sending Boehner out to say stupid shit to look important, we are so fucked. It’s the Barnum and Bailey era of politics. Or, a sucker born every minute.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see hot babe tea bag candidates firing automatic weapons in campaign ads.
It will soon be time to reopen The Funhouse.
jwb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Unfortunately, I do think this is the Gooper plan for the November election, and lord help us all if they are successful (which given the economy I would say they have a better than even shot at).
Third Eye Open
HAHA! The Economist photoshop’d the president and made him look black. What a bunch of cheeky-monkeys.
cleek
everybody panic! now!
Pancake
Given what the MSM did to Bush/McCain/Palin, etc., this turnabout only seems eminently fair and just.
homerhk
Pancake, what precisely did the MSM do to Bush/McCain/Palin? It’s not enough to say that some reporter asked Palin a question she couldn’t answer by the way.
rec
The beauty of it is that not only did they make him lonely where he wasn’t, they turned his attentive stance into aimless shoegazing.
demimondian
@cleek: Heh. Priceless.
The term fractal is a coinage of the nineteen eighties, and the notion of self-similarity in non-linear systems of the nineteen seventies, yet the Elliot Wave Theory depends on them. Ye-ahh.
Comrade Mary
@cleek: From the article:
… except that if a substantial number of people pull out of the market, the crash becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who jump late have less to put into money markets, and the entire economy that affects all of us, stockholders and non-stockholders, takes a hit.
That said, I took all my RSPs out of mutual funds and into money markets a few weeks ago. I’m still buying new mutual funds because they’re cheap and will probably get cheaper, but I’m not gambling with the bulk of my savings.
Nick
@rec: Well that’s the worst thing…they changed the meaning of the photo, from engaged and interested to helpless and hopeless. From strong leader to weak.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Pancake: Your flitter is flat.
oliver's Neck
Hey, so does anyone here have a read/explanation for the new Repub talking point vis-a-vis extending unemployment benefits: that they would love to do it, but that it must come from “unspent stimulus money” which the Dems refuse to spend? The comments on Krugman’s latest are peppered with this line. I’m not finding anything particularly useful via the goog and I’m unwilling to wade into the “direct” sources of the groupthink. SO, um, if one of you would do that for me and report back it’d be great. Thanks.
Linda Featheringill
From the cited article:
What a nice example of what is going on a lot these days. A lot of times, the Other Side tries to portray Obama has overwhelmed and alone. But he is not alone. We are with him and so are a lot of other folks. Being president is a big job but Barack is not alone, he has lots of help, and he could get lots more help if he asked for it.
The question is, should we allow this nonsense to go on unchallenged? Or should we wage a PR battle to set the picture right?
scav
@oliver’s Neck: well, that’s a new one. Dems accused of not spending money. . . . well, given that Dems are the unjustified war-mongers now too. . . .
JAHILL10
Well if Obama vs. BP has so far resulted in a 20 billion, no cap, damages fund, I’d say Obama is holding his own, whether he is standing alone on the shore or not. But this sort of crap should not go unchallenged. The reasons photographs are used in news stories is that they are supposed to represent reality, you know, like factual reporting, not so they can fit some editor’s narrative. If that’s what they want they should get an artist to draw them a picture.
oliver's Neck
@scav:
Yeah, I had a similar reaction.
MikeBoyScout
Seems the photoshop boys over at the Economist let us down.
Why only go half way?
Just think if they could have put him in a keffiyeh and carrying a metal detector?
Or if one needs to go the Black Jimmy Carter, why not put Carter on the beach being chased by a rabbit? Oh, and of course make him darker.
You get the picture.
Kryptik
But David Weigel said some nasty things about people on an email forum, so yeah. And it’s not like they were implying that Obama is weak or implicit in the spill (which, FYI, he TOTALLY is, Rush told me so).
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda Featheringill: I would sign up as a foot soldier in the kind of PR campaign you describe. This photoshopping job *completely* misrepresents the man and the message. It’s as despicable a piece of journalistic malfeasance as I can remember. I imagine Media Matters will have something about it, and possibly KO will make The Economist his third runner-up WPITW, but this — and exactly what meme is being pushed here, and why — needs to get lodged in a lot of people’s awareness.
How do we launch this campaign?
cleek
@oliver’s Neck:
“unspent stimulus money” has been a GOP catch phrase for at least a year.
but, the money is “unspent” only in that some of the various state-level projects for which it was allocated have not yet started.
Bella Q
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’d be quite happy to get on this wagon, because:
And photos aren’t supposed to reflect a narrative, but rather, reality. This photoshop totally inverted the reality of what the photo showed. Sucks, and should be called out.
oliver's Neck
@cleek:
Thank you.
Mary G
The Brits have cranky-pants because BP has been outed as a very bad corporation and it reflects poorly on the whole country. Also, too, BP suspended its dividend and the stock price has cratered and all the poor pensioners who invested their life savings will have to eat cat food.
So the Economist is indulging in a little classic abuser’s blame-the-victim defense: why did you make us destroy your environment?
scav
Well, Lee Siegel has declared that “Fiction has become culturally irrelevant.” in part because “For better or for worse, the greatest storytellers of our time are the nonfiction writers.” Clearly, The Economist is merely doing it’s best to be a daring leader in all this brave new world of the literary cutting edge. Either that, or there hasn’t been a Tony Hayward angle for a while and they’re feeling a little at a loss for a compelling narrative.
Nick
@oliver’s Neck:
Republicans are trying to set up a fiscal responsbility trap for the Dems. The unspent stimulus money is needed to keep the economy above water for the forseeable future, and is barely enough to do it. Republicans know that, but also know they have always had success in “fiscal responsbility” arguments, so they can run around and scream “DEFICIT!” and say Dems are blowing the deficit open by passing unpaid for unemployment benefits when they can use the stimulus money no one understands is necessary to keep the economy afloat.
In the meantime, if they can people to back the idea of spending unspent stimulus money on unemployment benefits, they can trigger another recession, which is aces for them politically.
Joel
Generally, the Economist is pretty good about this crap. I wonder if the fact that they’re a bunch of snooty English brats has something to do with this.
eemom
The linky says that it was ‘shopped from a Reuters photo, and that Reuters has a strict policy against doing that. Be nice if Reuters sued some British Economist ass.
Sly
@oliver’s Neck:
The answer will probably depend on who you ask once you get past the fact that, in legislative terms, there is no unspent money in ARRA. It may be deferred spending, but thats not the same as unspent. In governmentese, its known as an unexpended balance. Everything is on a schedule mandated by the statute itself.
Congress would have to reappropriate that unexpended balance from some other section of ARRA. The rules of the Senate make this extremely difficult to do, in the respect that the rules give inordinate powers to individual Senators to raise points of order against adding, subtracting, and reappropriating funds. Especially reapproriating. From Senate Rule 16, P. 8:
I’m fairly cynical, so I’d wager that the Senate Republican leadership are basically trying to play the game where they raise an approach that would be next to impossible because of procedural hurdles and hope that the public doesn’t give a shit about the arcane minutiae of parliamentary procedure. That’s basically been they’re M.O. for the past year and a half, so I’d consider it a safe bet. Meanwhile their handmaidens will complain that the Democrats don’t want to take money away from their union friends.
frankdawg
I would almost give them a pass on this if the story was about the President having to make tough choices in a ‘buck-stops-here” sort of tone. But that is not what they did.
AS for it being a British publication – well maybe it’s part of a xenophobic twitch but I wonder more about how interlocked its owners are to the people that own America & want to bring the benefits of serfdom to Americans.
eemom
In other emmess news, Yglesias has this, Confusion at the Washington Post, which is kind of like saying, Crazy People at St. Elizabeth’s.
ETA: drat. Linky button didn’t work. : (
SiubhanDuinne
@eemom: Yeah, at the very least it seems that the Economist violated important terms of their Reutters contract.
jwb
@Nick: And given that We, the People evidently have an attention span shorter than a gnat, the Goopers seem likely to succeed.
debbie
@Nick:
What the Democrats need to do (and loudly) is point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans: how they sat on their principles while Bush/Cheney spent wildly without worrying about funding. Interesting that all this fiscal conscientiousness suddenly appeared on January 21, 2009.
They also ought to point out that Republicans had no problem handing money out to people in Iraq, but that they’ve become very tight-fisted when it comes to their follow citizens. They even ought to trot out that Biblical (I think) phrase: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Make this kind of hypocrisy the real face of compassionate conservatism.
oliver's Neck
@Nick: @Sly:
Excellent and informative. Thanks to you both.
Libby
The Economist has been going downhill for a long time, hasn’t it? I have to say though, I find it almost amusing that they photoshopped out the white people. Most of the p-shopping scandals I’ve seen in the last few months, it’s been the opposite.
scav
well, here, as we approach still more of the wingularity and have just come off a fireworks jag, have this semi-OT break, a panorama of the Universe with possible speckles from the near Big Bang (the Aftershock of Reasonable Size?). All I can say is, please, let this be the alternative with the Doctor in it.
Honus
Jimmy Carter may have looked weak and lonely, (especially as compared to a professional actor) but it also happens he was pretty much right about everything, even at the time.
If Reagan hadn’t reversed most of his energy policies, we’d be independent of Middle Eastern oil by now, and the related political and security problems. But Exxon and Halliburton and Blackwater would be a lot less prosperous.
Linda Featheringill
@SiubhanDuinne:
To stage a PR campaign:
I don’t know what to do. HOWEVER, we should at least send supportive messages to columnists/bloggers who carry the story.
As I’ve never worked for a newspaper, I am not sure: Would it help to send a message to the relevant editor[s]?
some other guy
Has no one ever seen any other Economist cover? They’re not exactly Life magazine.
QuaintIrene
And keep repeating the word ‘malaise’ over and over again.
Honus
@debbie: I don’t quite get why that doesn’t more traction, either. We are building schools and infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan, while laying off teachers here.
And not just in poor areas, but in places like here in Albemarle County, Virginia, which has for many decades been one of the richest counties in the country. Supposedly McDonnell was elected by a huge margin by our patriotic voters for just this purpose.
Nick
@debbie: Yeah my congressman and Senators have been doing that to no avail consistently for the past 18 months. It hasn’t been making a dent.
And when it does, the media tends to slap it down to “these are different times” or whatever.
Chris Grrr
Much ado about nothing. While I really liked “time for another blogger ethics panel,” I can’t see the slur here.
It’s a magazine with a lot of commentary inside, and they usually get it right. A blue-toned cover with posterization and darker hues, and cropping the President so he’s alone, doesn’t wildly change the context of the original photo. Not to this DFH, anyway.
Linda Featheringill
I took my own advice and left a comment at the cited article in the NYT.
Perhaps we could keep an eye out for writers who deserve a response and let the BJ community know about it?
Thanks.
scav
well, TPM comments have this: [email protected]
Problem is, the remaining hard-core readers of the Economist aren’t exactly in the likely to be convinced category and I don’t know how much of a general rep the publication has. Might be along the lines of eek! the Tri-County Scribe has a fact-free editorial next to the news that Sally called her grandmother on her birthday! Golly I’d love to see Reuters have a go at them though.
some other guy
FWIW, here are some other Economist covers featuring photoshopped photos of Barack Obama:
http://trackacrat.com/2009/11/23/the-economist-obama-covers/
demimondian
@Chris Grrr: There’s no slur. There’s a deliberate misrepresentation of the content of the photo.
I remember seeing that cover just a few days ago and thinking how wonderful a representation of the nature of the job it was. As published, the cover was a fabulous bit of photographic art — but it’s lousy journalism.
AxelFoley
@JAHILL10:
Co-sign.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
@scav:
The Economist used to be a pretty widely-respected publication, much less on the loony Right than among a broad cross-section of somewhat educated public opinion.
Of course, that was then. I haven’t kept up with them lately, but if this is par for the course then I’d rather just subscribe to some wacko e-mail list or watch Fox News for my daily propaganda.
The Disgruntled Chemist
Remember, the Tea Party has nothing to do with racism. Nope, nothing at all.
jeffreyw
Thread needs moar puppies.
some other guy
@Equal Opportunity Cynic:
Um, they endorsed Kerry and Obama for President. They supported Obama’s HCR bill.
But they have an unflattering cover of Barack Obama so now they MUST BE teabaggers.
TomG
Chris Grrr @ 47 – did you not read the article? The picture was not cropped, the other 2 people were REMOVED via Photoshop with more of the Gulf put in.
As a general rule, I think changing any part of a picture without a CLEAR disclaimer on or beneath it is unethical. It may seem a minor gripe, but I don’t think it is too much to ask. Save your editorializing for words.
Alan
So, as a general rule, Economist covers are photo illustrations, not photographs. For example: http://thepage.time.com/2009/11/27/the-quiet-american/
However, this particular photo illustration looks a bit too much like a photo to be clearly identified as an illustration on the newsstand.
burnspbesq
@SiubhanDuinne:
All due respect, I think you and others have over-reacted. The Times piece is also lacking in context. If you look at the actual Economist cover, you’ll see that the headline is “Obama v. BP.” The photo fits that narrative, regardless of whether you think the narrative is appropriate or not.
The meta-issue, of course, is that the time when one could trust ANY photograph to be an accurate reflection of what the photographer saw has long since come and gone, if indeed it ever existed.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
On what theory, and for what relief? At best (worst?), Economist may have violated the terms of the license agreement between it and Reuters, but what damages can Reuters prove?
Jennifer
Shameless blogwhore alert: my own personal 4th of July ruminations are pretty darn good, if I say so myself.
There’s an asshat by the name of Jill Lawrence who put up a post over at AOL (like anyone will ever see it there) on the premise that what’s wrong with us liberals is that we don’t wave flags around enough. Fortunately I had already answered to her asshattery with this post, because AOL’s closed shop comments system requires not only registering with them, but then passing through their moderators to make sure no one says anything uncivil about the dumbassery posted by the author. Which goes a long way to explaining why the company that was the #1 internet service provider only 10 short years ago is now likely to soon be extinct.
In any case, hope you all had a great 4th. And John, next time you get ready to grill pork tenderloins, remind me to pass on the recipe for the citrus-cumin-garlic-oregano marinade. It was featured on our menu yesterday, and with the citrus-ginger glaze I made to accompany it….oh so good.
Brachiator
@oliver’s Neck:
I noted a few tidbits about this in an earlier thread. The Republicans pretend to be deficit hawks, but they deliberately mislead the public on how stimulus money has been allocated.
The odds are that Congress will extend the benefits. They must also consider whether to make the extension retroactive. But both Democrats and Republicans are moving at a glacial pace from the perspective of people who really need their benefits. The House passed an extension bill and sent it to the Senate, which had already adjourned for the Fourth of July holiday.
It’s interesting, by the way, that the Townhall article polls voters about the effectiveness of the stimulus, but does not poll economists.
@eemom:
Unfortunately, the Reuters policy only covers its own employees. But it will be interesting to see if The Economist maintains its “no comment” stance, or fesses up.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: That’s the point. The Economist uses cover mashups and caricatures to symbolize what their lead story is intended to convey. But this is a form of journalistic falsification. It’s no better than the infamous Time OJ cover.
burnspbesq
Though experiment for those who are squawking about The Economist:
Suppose the same photographer had shot another photo, a few seconds later, from a different angle, composed so that only Obama was in the frame. Suppose further that the Economist had chosen to use the hypothetical second photo. Do you still have a problem with what the Economist ran on its cover? And if so, why?
Elie
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
We are living in totally amazing times…
When I go over to read up on the GOM situation and the oil techie talk over at the Oil Drum, the commentariat are more than adequately represented by the ultra right, anti-government types who advocate for continued hegemony of the corporate sector and blame Obama and the government for just about all that has gone wrong with the Gulf response (short of actually causing the actual accident — and there are some there who even triangulate to that)
I for the first time in a long time listened to ABC’s This Week yesterday and was completely depressed for a few hours after in the inability of our media to discuss anything in a way that helps anyone a) understand the issue, b) understand our many times limited and tough choices and c) that those tough choices, even when correct, take a long time to see that they were indeed correct.
No one has stomach for reality and courage — only mendacity and being craven — with no “punishment” for being so — except that we all get one more day in our current hell…
Sometimes I say to myself that if I were Obama, I would just walk away at the end of my first term and say, Good Luck to all of you in finding your magic pony. I am sure that you can.”
burnspbesq
@Chad N Freude:
I respectfully disagree. See my comment 63.
If you have an issue with this cover, and you’re being logically consistent, then you also have to have an issue with “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Because what you are in effect saying is that photography can never have, or be used to serve, an agenda.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: I would not have a problem with an unaltered photograph, although I might question the intent of choosing that particular photo.
licensed to kill time
The Economist should not have altered Reuters’ photo. They could easily have gone with an ‘artist’s rendering’ of the mood they wanted to convey, whatever the hell it was.
I think people will see what they want to see in the cover, as usual. Instead of alone and depressed you could also read it as pensive and grieving for the environment, or “fuck me, another mess to clean up!” or any number of other ways depending on your perspective. Since I was familiar with the original photo, all I see is Obama in his listening mode.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: Not at all. See my comment at 66. How is the Economist’s alteration of the photograph different from a photo of Obama’s face with a Hitler moustache?
(And I don’t think this question is an example of Godwin’s Law.)
Emma
Burnspbesq: No, I wouldn’t. Because it was a REAL photo, an example of REAL photojournalism.
I don’t mind almost any sort of digital photography except the one where the photographer supposedly took the shot at sunset, using this camera and this lens, blah, blah, blah, and then in the small print he tells you he removed the sky and put a better one in its place.
Photojournalism should steer clear of Photoshop, except to sharpen the focus and despeckle.
Chad N Freude
@licensed to kill time: I can agree with that. When I saw the cover (I’m a subscriber), I did not get an impression of “Carter malaise”. My beef is with modifying the picture without a clear indication that that was done, apparently to give an impression, negative or positive, that would not have been given by the unaltered photo.
JGabriel
@Nick:
Fixed that for you.
.
Nickws
@homerhk:
Obviously this is the relevant outrage:
Or maybe it isn’t.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Answering my own question, in one case the alteration is obvious, in the other, it’s concealed.
JGabriel
@some other guy:
Very true, but their manipulations are always obvious enough to fall in the category of parody / commentary / clear artistic license.
The latest cover is not. It manipulates the photo of Obama in a fashion that obscures, rather than highlights, the artifice.
.
licensed to kill time
@Chad N Freude:
Yeah, the cover’s a Rorschach test, I suppose. At least the Economist didn’t indulge in Cavuto marks, i.e. “BP disaster spells end of Obama’s presidency?” or “Obama’s Tarpit?” or some such FOXfuckery.
Chad N Freude
@JGabriel: This!
Platonicspoof
@Brachiator:
If they don’t normally comment (no idea myself), they now might be realizing that the photoshopping can be seen as narrative-creating, rather than reporting.
They just responded:
Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.
Her presence would not have been puzzling in the least to me.
And as an alternative to photoshopping, she could have been identified in a caption. End of “problem”.
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
I don’t see the point of your hypothetical. The second photo did not happen. Speculation is not very useful. But let’s play. Suppose that the Economist story accompanying the photo emphasized Obama’s elitism and aloofness, and implied that he showed up in the Gulf and refused to confer with local officials. In that context, your hypothetical second photo, composed to focus on Obama, would still be a lie.
The Enconomist cover is the difference between editorializing and reporting. And it’s lazy. The editors could have searched harder for a photo of Obama by himself, or a photo which did not falsify what actually occurred.
But this is probably a losing battle. Editors and publishers, desperate to get people to look at their publications, increasingly use editing tricks to make models and celebrities look younger and thinner or otherwise change the context of a photo in order to punch up the impact of the shot. And whenever they are caught at it, they sheepishly apologize, but then keep on doing it.
What a lame response. They could easily have identified the others in the photo.
JGabriel
@Chris Grrr:
It does, because it’s not cropping. The other people in the photo were airbrushed or Photoshopped out, to create a much larger zone of solititude for Obama to inhabit.
If it were mere cropping, I’d say you have a point. But The Economist’s action here is a little beyond the line. It’s either a dishonest representation of reality – due to the Photoshopping; or a dishonest commentary – due to the care taken to obscure that the photo was manipulated.
.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Suppose the same photographer had shot another photo, a few seconds later, from a different angle, composed so that only Obama was in the frame. Suppose further that the Economist had chosen to use the hypothetical second photo. Do you still have a problem with what the Economist ran on its cover? And if so, why?
Not unless they altered the photo. They altered, edited, changed a piece of, well art. Not high art but art none the less. It would be the same as if I pasted a post from digby, added a paragraph and put it out there as mine. It’s a forgery. It’s considered theft. They say they cropped the photo. That’s not changing it, that’s just not using all of it. But then they removed a person and filled in the spot. That alters someones work.
debbie
@burnspbesq:
For one thing, The Economist had no legal right to alter a copyrighted image (other than cropping). But equally mysterious is why they felt the need to darken up the overall image and make it seem more gloomy. If that’s not giving the OJ treatment to NO, I don’t know what is.
debbie
@ Chris Grr:
Sure it does. In the original, he’s hunching over slightly to listen to the woman who’s much shorter than he is; in the altered version, he’s alone and so downcast he can’t lift his head.
Fern
There is no such thing as a picture that is an accurate reflection of reality. To start with, a photo is two dimensional representation while the world is three dimensional. A picture is an image, not a representation of reality.
The photographer selects a subject out of a multitude of possible subjects, frames it, adjusts aperture and time to create a specific effect. Ten people could take a picture of the same subject, and all the pictures would be different. Which is the best reflection of reality? Who knows.
I have no trouble with photo-shopping unless the purpose is to deliberately mis-represent an event or object – that is, to lie.
Sly
If we accept for a moment that the Economist wasn’t trying to craft a narrative that contradicts what is in the unaltered photo, as they say, is that excuse supposed to endear anyone to them any more than had their interest actually been to propagandize?
“We left out whats-her-name because our readers are too fucking stupid to read a caption.”
Yeah. I trust the Economist much more now.
Svensker
@scav:
Wow, beautiful. Awesome. Wow.
Mike in NC
@JGabriel:
Can’t wait for teabagger queen Kathleen Parker to reference Obama’s “Zone of Solitude” in her next vapid column.
Svensker
@jeffreyw:
Awwww is that the cutest puppy ever or what?
EconWatcher
It’s common practice to use a photo taken in a different context to illustrate your point artfully. Thus, if a magazine shows me a sad photo right after a political mishap, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that the photo was actually taken a year ago after some tragic event, and is now being used to convey that the mishap probably makes the politician sad. There’s a smidge of misrepresentation involved if the photo is not dated, but I wouldn’t cry foul.
But this really is different. The photo can rightly be called faked. For a newsmagazine, that just isn’t right.
Svensker
@Fern:
What you said. If the cover is supposed to show how isolated Obama is, then photoshopping would have been bad. But just showing him looking pensive at the mess in the Gulf? What’s the big deal? Seems like there’s a lot more stuff out there to get outraged about than this.
debbie
Reuters specifies “no additions or deletions to image” and that all their content is copyrighted.
http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/A_Brief_Guide_to_Standards%2C_Photoshop_and_Captions#To_Recap
http://thomsonreuters.com/content/footer/terms_of_use/
Brachiator
@Fern:
In this case, a phtographer’s work was deliberately changed by a totally unrelated party. The Ecnonomist’s editors did not hire the Reuters photographer or send him on assignment. They used a photo which recorded Obama’s appearance in the Gulf and altered it in order to create a piece of editorial commentary.
MikeJ
@debbie: I’m sure the Economist paid for use of the picture. Yes, the agreement says you can’t alter it, but to enforce that agreement they need to sue their customer and then demonstrate that they were damaged in some way.
They may do both of those things. I wouldn’t count on it. They will probably bitch about it in public.
gnomedad
@Fern:
True, but the same is true of prose. There’s still a difference between writing from a viewpoint and outright fabrication. Both the photographer’s choices and subsequent cropping can be used honestly or dishonestly, but actually removing or inserting elements without making it clear that you have done so crosses the line. “Making it clear” would include a photo so obviously processed as to be “original art”.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
Given that the headlines are “Obama v BP” and “The Damage Beyond the Spill,” where are you getting the idea that it’s not supposed to be portraying Obama’s isolation and the damage done to his presidency by the spill?
The picture was Photoshopped to create a false reality by manufacturing an image of an isolated Obama brooding over the disaster. That is something I have a problem with.
Mnemosyne
@gnomedad:
And it’s not like the Economist has never done that before — see also their “This Is Going to Hurt” cover where they Photoshopped a doctor’s scrubs onto Obama.
There is a difference between a news photograph — which I would argue is what this “Obama v BP” cover is being presented as — and Photoshop art like the “This Is Going to Hurt” cover. I know that we can alter photographs any way we like to tell any story we like, but is it really such a great idea to invent news photographs of events that didn’t actually happen?
Chris Grrr
@demimondian and others: Yes, I did read the linked article. My use of “cropped” instead of “edited” was a goof on my part.
I’ve been a magazine art director and probably give cover art more leeway, out of reflex. I take this cover along with all else I know of this publication – and I still just can’t see the malevolence that I would assume from the National Review. Actually I think I would be as bothered as most here if the edited photo had run on top of a news article within the magazine – but c’mon.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Chris Grrr:
Meeting the malevolence of the NR is hardly the point. If Obama had been standing on the beach looking pensive out over the open ocean and was with several others doing same, I wouldn’t have too big a problem with cropping out those other people. But here they created a meme of a presidential state of being, or mind with a lie. By casting body language as something it wasn’t. From Obama actively leaning over to listen to, or engage in, a conversation with people shorter than himself, and changing entirely the context of his body language to illustrate a meme that didn’t exist within the reality of what was happening on that beach with Obama. This is allowed in creative contexts, but not political meme making. And passed off as news.
Comrade Kevin
@eemom:
Reuters are also a British company.
Nick
Lulz
Oh, by all means, let’s not educate the readers by telling them who this woman is, she’s just a President of a damn Louisiana parish, no big deal.
Except your readers are not lead to believe Obama was standing there alone, when in reality, he was talking with a local elected official.
And somehow a magazine like The Economist doesn’t think the President of a poor Louisiana Parish is an important person to hightlight concerning the spill’s damage to “business in America.” This woman’s constituency is going to be hurt more than anyone else!
henqiguai
@Comrade Kevin (#98):
And uh, British companies have some ancient rule of comity wherein they don’t sue each other ? Not that I think this little issue is worth either the expense or the press.
Nick @(#99:)
Hell, even most Americans don’t think she or her constituents are important in the great scheme of American life and politics…
eemom
@burnspbesq:
Injury to reputation, for one thing. That doesn’t seem at all implausible when what Economist has done is associate Reuters with a doctored photo against its own strict policy. That’s why they HAVE that policy.
And injury to reputation — unlike whatever that Judge Oil Whore came up with to justify his injunction against the drilling moratorium — DOES constitute “irreparable damage.”
eemom
@Comrade Kevin:
ok, be nice if some British Reuters sued some British Economist ass. I mean it’s not like Brits don’t sue each other. That’s why they have all those Barristers who wear those silly wigs.
Chris Grrr
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Understood.
It’s revisionist, and skewed, and politically sensitive.
If the cover of a magazine that contains a lot of commentary isn’t a “creative context”, though . . .
(And I guess those exaggerated, satirical caricatures of politicians are now out-of-bounds too.)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Chris Grrr:
The Economist is a mainstream media publication. And satirical cartoons have no relevance to this issue we are discussing. This was a serious news article. If they had written an article speculating that Obama must be feeling alone and depressed at times, then that is inbounds, and people can take it or leave it. But a picture doctored to completely change it’s context to support their speculation is not in bounds. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. They say it cause it’s true.
burnspbesq
@debbie:
Hold up a sec. Unless you’ve seen the license agreement between Reuters and the Economist, you have no basis on which to say that. Have you? Even if you are an experienced professional photojournalist who has seen dozens of other such agreements, you’re still speculating.
burnspbesq
@debbie:
Umm, no. That’s your take. I look at that Economist cover (I’m a subscriber, FWIW) and I see alone and pensive. Or maybe alone and scheming up schemes to squeeze BP until it squeals.
Nick
@burnspbesq: Regardless, in the picture, he WASN’T alone. So right there, they’ve committed journalistic malpractice.
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
Either way, what you see is not an accurate reflection of the photograph that shows him bending down to give attention to the Lousiana official who was with him.
burnspbesq
@Nick:
Sez who? Is there some codification somewhere of what constitutes accepted practice by news organizations in the handling of photographs? Or are we in the land of “I don’t like it, so it must be wrong?” Not trying to throw any more gasoline on the fire – I honestly don’t know who decides what is “ethical” behavior by news organizations, or how those decisions are made or enforced.
Mnemosyne
@Chris Grrr:
If we’ve gotten to the point where you magazine editors don’t understand the difference between news photographs and satirical caricatures, no wonder journalism is in deep shit.
Hint: if you make things up — yes, even in Photoshop — and present them as the truth, it’s not called “journalism.” It’s called “lying.”
Fern
In a photo that is intended to document an event, yes, photo shopping out a person would be a problem.
But the Economist is not documenting an event with this picture. They are creating an image for a magazine cover.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Reuters has a reputation that can be injured?
Nellcote
If Reuters suing is good enough for Shepard Farey it should be good enough for The Economist.
AxelFoley
@Mnemosyne:
Fuckin’ shame some folks can’t understand this.
demimondian
@burnspbesq: I hate to agree with the lawyer here, but…
Look, the cover, in my opinion, was inappropriate *as journalism*. I already said that. I wouldn’t use big quasi-legal terms like “malpractice”, though. Shoddy, ill-thought-out, clever at the expense of accuracy, yes, but “malpractice”? What are the community standards against which you would measure this practice? What is the harm? Was the image “false”? Out of context, yes, but “false”? That seems a bit bizarre.
Nick
@demimondian:
Yes, there never was a picture taken that way. There was another person in that shot. Yes, it was false.
If you take the disciples out of The Last Supper or the flag out of the shot on Iwo Jima, that completely changes the meaning of the photo, which would make it false.
MikeJ
@Nellcote: It was AP that sued Fairey. They didn’t sue him for altering the photo, they sued him for not paying for it. Fair use or not was the issue, but fair use is an affirmative defense, that is, you have to prove it in court, you can’t just claim it.
The Economist paid for the photo. It’ll be a lot harder to show damages for the Economist altering a picture they paid for than it would be for AP to show damages for a picture they weren’t paid for.
I’m making no claim as to which side in either case is morally or legally right, but it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
Mnemosyne
@Fern:
So you’re arguing that you can Photoshop a photograph any way you like — even if said Photoshopping creates a false impression of what’s happening in the photo — as long as it’s not actually presented as a news event?
Fern
@Mnemosyne: Pretty much.
Gromit
I think it’s easy to overstate the degree to which an “unaltered” photograph represents the truth. Remember the photo of Obama supposedly checking out a woman’s ass? Another photo from another angle showed he was simply watching where he was stepping.
@burnspbesq:
I did conduct this thought experiment and arrived at more or less the opposite conclusion. Had the photographer shot the image exactly as it is framed on the cover, I do think it would have been mildly deceptive. I think it is easy to overstate the importance of the fact that photoshop work was done here. Had the photo simply been framed to exclude the other people on the beach and the object of Obama’s gaze, it would have conveyed the same false message.
I’m not one to get terribly worked up about this, however. I just find it interesting that it’s the photoshop work that is the flashpoint here, when traditional in-camera techniques, and even simple captioning, can be just as deceptive.
Gromit
I’d also be curious to know if that is actually a BP rig in the distance. The caption pushes us toward that inference, but there is really no other reason to think it is.
Mnemosyne
@Fern:
Sorry, I can’t go with that. That infamous photo of Filippa Hamilton wasn’t a news photo, either, but that doesn’t mean that Ralph Lauren was justified in Photoshopping her into looking like a famine victim.
Just because you can Photoshop something a certain way doesn’t mean that you should.
Fern
@Mnemosyne: I don’t like that photo either, not because it was shopped, but because it is one of many, many images that promote unattainable and unhealthy body images.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
It is surprising that folks here are defending what The Economist did with that photo. And remember the “obama oogles 16 year old girls butt” cropped from a video that shows something else entirely..
Oversexed black dude meme
and
Black dude in over his head, cracking under pressure with oil spill.
Whether consciously done or not in either instance, the effect is the same.
And both propose photographic lies as evidence.
Midnight Marauder
@Fern:
Um…whether The Economist is documenting an event is kind of besides the point. The point is that the photograph they used for their cover is, in fact, documenting an event. A very real event with a very particular context associated with said event. By eliminating the context that led to the moment that precipitated the photograph in the first place–President Obama on the beach discussing the situation with two different individuals–The Economist has subsequently created their own reality via a photograph that would not otherwise exist without their efforts in Photoshop.
I mean, I get what you are trying to argue here, but your very argument demonstrates the exact problem in this situation. They are “creating” an image to represent the narrative of their cover story.
It’s just too bad that the image they created has fuck all to do with what is actually happening in the original photograph. If you want a picture of President Obama looking mopey on the beach, then do the fucking work to find a real picture of what you’re looking forward, or go with an obvious caricature if you’re unable to find a real picture. But this creating your own reality bullshit might be fine for neocons in the Bush White House, but it damn sure is unacceptable for a highly regarded journalistic publication.
debbie
@Burnspbesq:
I’m a graphic designer who’s bought a number of stock photographs over the years, so I know the standard conditions and I’ve always adhered to them (the fines aren’t worth the crime). I’ve never bought from Getty (a direct competitor to Reuters), but I do know that their policies are incredibly strict. I doubt it would be legal/ethical to have an agreement with The Economist that differed from other clients purchasing similarly. And if there are special discounts for frequent purchases, then they would have been included in the published terms and conditions.
Funny, back in the 1980s I worked for a publisher who published a book of photographs taken, published, and then subsequently airbrushed by the Russian and Chinese Communists. Individuals who had “defied” the authorities were disappeared. I remember quite a bit of outrage from conservatives that the authorities would have done such a thing. (Actually, considering they were pre-Photoshop, they were really pretty good.)
debbie
@Fern:
What they are doing is creating an image with someone else’s property. They’d have had to get permission first, and if they had done so, wouldn’t you think that fact would have been included in The Economist editor’s statement?
At the very least, they should have run a credit line somewhere, stating that it was a photo illustration and giving credit to the Reuters photographer.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The photo doesn’t bother me, nor does the speculation that Obama is stressed out over the oil spill and all the other shit he has to deal with. I would be surprised if he wasn’t. And while the legalities may be debated, this is about our disintegrating state of journalistic integrity. I think it has more to do with ultra competitive mindsets and not anything diabolical, at least in most cases, and maybe this one.
It is creating hype to sell stories, and out of whole cloth like with this purposely altered photo to add credibility to the angle. Who knows what else motivated them, but all of it has the stench of feeding to readers cheesy appetite for seeing people raked over coals. Which is okay when it’s deserved and true evidence is provided. We see it on the blogs every day. Maybe that is where they get the idea they can get away with it. I don’t know, but it is not a positive direction.
Midnight Marauder
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I would contend that ultra competitive mindsets have proven themselves to be of monumental detriment in a variety of industries in this country, from Wall Street to the realm of journalism.
Regardless of diabolical intent, the ramifications of such ultra competitive mindsets have proven to have diabolical consequences.
bago
@Mnemosyne: Yep. Welcome to your new fungible media, same as the old fungible media.
Chris Grrr
@Mnemosyne: See #112. You can assign any meaning and significance, weight and motive you wish – anything you can concieve. The longstanding industry practice doesn’t care a whit.
It’s a cover, not presented as a straight-line “news photograph.” The color saturation is a clue.
Covers sell copies. The hard reporting and commentary is inside. Hate that practice, decry it – but it’s nothing new. It’s one thing to dislike what they did, and another entirely to maintain that one of the ways they got creative with their cover is somehow unusual or suspect.
I am trying hard to appreciate the majority view, here, but ridiculous assumptions about what is or isn’t understood by people responsible for magazine covers (ahem, #105 – this photo wasn’t exclusively supporting the “serious news article”!) are not conducive to the conversation.
Midnight Marauder
@Chris Grrr:
The explanation from The Economist:
That’s a pretty lame and suspect excuse. So the reason they removed the context from the original picture is because a) their readership is too stupid and/or unsophisticated to understand who and what a parrish president in Louisiana is; or b) They didn’t think she was important to the photograph, even though the entire reason for the photograph’s existence is because President Obama was meeting with her and Thad Allen.
That’s a pretty fucking lame justification.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Chris Grrr:
Jeebus, wtf does this even mean? Sounds like goblety guuk rationalization for cheating to me.
I am sure it isn’t new. And what does that have to do with it being wrong? That is precisely what the Wall Street bankers told themselves and each other before the shit hit the fan.
Boney Baloney
Innoculation much? Yeah, “Iraq II IS NOT VIETNAM” did a lot of good toward making Iraq II not turn out like Vietnam.
“Obama IS NOT JC II” was tickling the dragon’s tail during the first year of his administration, but it might actually have worked if, you know, show don’t tell, not so much of the parting of the butt cheeks, kind of thing.
“Obama/Biden 2012: Because Lame Ducks Can Do Whatever They Want, Finally, Without Fear of Political Backlash! Opening Act: Rahm the Castrator, Frightening the Easily Frightened!”
debbie
Whether The Economist wanted to portray Obama as alone or desolate, it still took a great deal of of work to remove the woman. Creating all that texture in the water doesn’t come at one or two clicks of the mouse.
Gromit
@debbie:
Actually, yes it does.
And while video is a pre-release preview, the software has been shipping for weeks.
debbie
FWIW, there’s a post over at Digital Photography’s forum about not getting consistent results with content-aware fill. Probably too early to know for sure and to have enough feedback to really judge, but this seems more like a crutch (or maybe just a first step) than a real and useful feature. There’s plenty of software out there to use as a one-step Photoshop function (ie, for masking), but you still have to go through and do manual refinements.
It’s not like Adobe hasn’t oversold itself in the past!
Chris Grrr
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Yup, if you pull part of a sentence as a quote, chances are good it won’t make sense.
You seem to be completely determined to ignore the history, purpose and rationale for magazine covers. I give up.
To others – for the nth time I’m not trying to rationalize what they did. Some of you are on a righteous tear as if such a thing is just never done in that industry. There are unmistakable clues that this image was “art-ified” and it’s muddling the issue to repeatedly ignore that this manipulation was not placed literally at the top of a news article (on the same page). Pound the “but that doesn’t make it right” drum all you want – it’s a fair point, but please, it’s a different point than even suggesting that this is unusual and suspect for a magazine’s freakin’ front cover.