American Maggie

Digital Images, the Internet, and Poor Ethics Are a Dangerous Combination in the Battle for Media Credibility

In 2002, as controversy about the impending Iraq war escalated and liberal criticism built up faster than Trade Center rubble, a discrediting picture of President Bush began making the rounds of the blogosphere.  It showed Bush in a classroom in Texas reading a book with a little girl.  Standard political fodder, the image included the requisite bulletin board, cute kid, and smiling President – with one distinct difference.  The book he was reading was upside down.  It soon emerged that the original photo, an AP image, showed the book correctly right side up.  The picture had been photo shopped by forgers seeking to affirm their views about presidential intelligence.  But the hoax’s exposure did not put it out of circulation.  The picture continued to proliferate on various news blogs for the next seven years.  Even the famous liberal blog Huffington Post recycled it without confirmation in 2008, calling the photograph “the most iconic picture of George W. Bush reading” (even more than My Pet Goat, apparently).  In March of 2009 influential blog Think Progress posted a story about Bush’s book deal for a biography, along with the photo shopped picture, and no indication that it was a fake.  A torrent of comments from readers mocked the President and accused him, inexplicably, of illiteracy.  Even conspiracy theorists jumped on the bandwagon.  In the Internet muddle, some bloggers confused the 2002 photo with the 2001 reading of My Pet Goat, claiming that the President had read the book upside down on 9/11 to send a secret signal, as goats in some religions had apocryphal significance. 

Fake photographs have plagued Presidents almost as long as photography has existed.  Abraham Lincoln endured the indignity of having an image of his head pasted onto one of John C. Calhoun’s body in a famous fake, and fauxtography followed him into the afterlife as well.  In 1871 a phony photo by William Mumler depicted Lincoln’s spirit, bent over a sorrowful Mary Todd in widow’s weeds, his ghostly hands cradling her shoulders.  As technology has expanded, so have the opportunities for mischief, and faking photos has become easier and more convincing than ever.  Still, it is possible that technology is self-correcting:  for every photograph digitally altered, there is an equally clever program to detect it.  But detection is only part of the problem.  As the Bush book photograph proves, the wide-scale dissemination of images on the web foils any attempts at control or correction.  Even when disproven, the photographs have a life of their own, replicating across blogs and websites like a malicious virus.  They – and their false messages – can live on long after their human subjects.

One motivation for tampering with history is the chance to become a part of it.  Some altered photographs begin as serious attempts to discredit a leader, while others are just jokes.  But, whatever the intent, once online forged images join the portfolio of professional work that defines a presidency.  One Internet web-hosting company admitted in 2007 that a photograph it faked of Karl Rove had boosted the company, commenting that “this [fake photo] has driven tens of thousands of visitors to our Web site. …we consider our web marketing experiment a success.”  Released during the controversy over White House email, the image was a digitally altered picture of Karl Rove carrying some files.  The name of a folder was changed to that of the company’s, on the hunch that when viewers Googled the folder title they would assume Rove was using non-Federal servers.  Numerous bloggers took the bait, and heavily traveled sites like DailyKos and Wonkette posted the photo or called for an investigation.  The allegations were withdrawn when the company admitted the hoax, but by then thousands had viewed the images and the myth about the company’s servers persisted. 

Political fauxtography does not discriminate based on party, either.  A 2008 photograph circulated on the web depicted President Obama talking on the phone with the receiver upside down.  It was a doctored image, and hardly original (a similar hoax materialized in 2005 of Bush, appearing to listen from a mouthpiece), but it gave his detractors ample opportunity to criticize his intelligence.  Sometimes, photo fakers attempt to improve on reality.  In 2004 a widely circulated photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda together on stage at an anti-war rally provoked outrage from both right and left.  Conservatives were incensed that Kerry supported Fonda’s pro-communist tactics in Vietnam, while liberals denounced the image as inauthentic.  The picture later proved to be a fake, and an unnecessary one, since a legitimate picture of Kerry and Fonda at a different rally existed.  But the real image was far less suggestive, as Kerry and Fonda were seated several rows apart, and it is highly likely that the faker was inspired to create a “better” picture for their own political ends.   

Sometimes fauxtography is not the result of doctoring an image, but altering its context.  The National Press Photographers Association’s ethics guidelines state:  “editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context.”  Unfortunately, even credible publications are not immune to photo tampering.  Just this month, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer David Hume Kennerly cried fowl when his picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney was dramatically altered through cropping and captioning by Newsweek editors.  The picture, a homey scene of Cheney helping prepare dinner with his wife, daughters, and granddaughter in a kitchen, had been cut down by two thirds, removing the women and creating a close-up of Cheney wielding a knife over a bloody cutting board.  Beside the altered photograph, Newsweek posted a caption about Cheney and the C.I.A. interrogations.  The implication of Cheney as a butcher was obvious; the blood on his blade only heightened the message.  Kennerly was justifiably outraged and called the incident “photo fakery,” professing his embarrassment and apologizing to the Cheneys, and taking Newsweek to task for the deception.  Newsweek admitted the act but not error in their public statement:  “Did we use the image to make an editorial point – in this case, about the former vice president’s red-blooded, steak-eating, full throated defense of his vets and values?  Yes, we did.”  The indictment of all steak-eaters as torturers aside, Newsweek’s duplicity was a dangerous departure from media responses to allegations of fraud.  Major news outlets such as the New York Times and the Associated Press have generally offered immediate and contrite apologies for altered photos that evade their screening process.  As they should.  Newsweek’s response was worthy of a tabloid, but in this case the danger was not an offended actress but altered perception of a former world leader. 

Photographs are a vital means of communicating events, experiences, and historical moments, but editorial liberties increase public skepticism and heighten the possibility that the photograph will lose credibility.  Ironically, the attitude of media outlets such as Newsweek undermines the very coverage they seek to provide.  Kennerly summarized the problem in his response to the fake Cheney picture:  ”this incident is another example of why many people don’t believe what they see or read.”  Amateur hoaxers do just as much damage.  Fake images like those of Rove or the upside-down phone are individually foolish or amusing, but they collectively breed public distrust.  A culture of photo doctoring may alter history, not just by deceiving the eye, but also by convincing people that all photographs cannot be trusted.  Individuals who manipulate photos and pass them as real are not pranksters, but frauds who construct alternate realities and injure the reputations of gifted professionals who show us the real world, unedited.  Media outlets must be vigilant against editorializing history, and mainstream bloggers must accept that their popularity obligates them to the same ethical standards as traditional media.  Otherwise, fauxtography may become the new photography, and our society will be poorer for it.

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Skyla Freeman is a former writer for President George W. Bush. She blogs about style and culture at Sanity Fair online (sfair.blogspot.com).