Fake Photos in the News

Lots of fake photography is showing up in the news, foisted on us by such august bodies as Reuters and the Communist Youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde. The latest is this gem, which purports to show Fidel Castro holding a copy of the Granma newspaper after his recent surgery:

Anyone with just a smidgeon of PhotoShop experience recognizes that this image is at least partially fake. The newspaper, blinding-white and displaying no perspective gradience whatsoever, was obviously added later. My guess is that the main photo was taken before his surgery. They probably asked him to hold up a blank sheet of paper, then crudely copied the image of the newspaper onto it later. Many photo experts and blog sites will no doubt point out some smaller details in the photo, such as the lack of a shadow near his thumb, faulty color values and white balance when compared to other items in the composition, and other details I've probably missed.

I am amused and heartened that, despite the advances in computers and technology in the last decade, the hustlers and scammers of this world not only still suck at creating fake photos, but they can't spell and are unable to use standard English idioms correctly in their spam e-mails. This makes their lame scams easy to spot, and easy to ignore.

I encourage all consumers of media products to learn how to spot bogus photos, biased reporting, and other sloppy or deceptive reporting practices. They don't just show up in the pages of Commie news rags, either...