Photoshop, protests, Commies, oh my!
October 3, 2005 1:04 AM   Subscribe

Anatomy of a Photograph. Photo posted on the San Francisco Chronicle website of a protester at the SF rally on on September 24. The image has been altered, which the paper admits, but photographer zombie at zombietime.com claims the paper covered up the radical aspect surrounding it. Is this liberal bias, or just a case of too much artistic license?
posted by zardoz (17 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: covered previously



 
That's one long list of disturbing assumptions.
posted by Poagao at 1:24 AM on October 3, 2005


Gaaah!! Commies!!!
posted by pompomtom at 1:26 AM on October 3, 2005


didn't we do this already?
posted by mr.marx at 1:42 AM on October 3, 2005


See also. And the Chronicle image wasn't altered (which zombie acknowledges). The problem with it was it didn't express zombie's narrative of the scene. In his update he doesn't even call it biased as much as a result of bland journalism.

Though when he says the paper doesn't do pictures like his, he's wrong. In this picture we see a similar group being directed by another girl in a yellow armband. I can't tell what kind of smoking-gun worldview-affirming enemy-among-us tee shirt she's wearing, however.
posted by fleacircus at 1:47 AM on October 3, 2005


One photo can't reveal a bias. If the Chronicle's coverage was biased, Zombietime should have analyzed the story that they ran with the picture. If it is Zombietime's contention that the protest was rife with extremism, which the Chronicle sanitized to push its own agenda, then they need to come up with a little more than "the anatomy of (one) photograph".
posted by recurve at 1:52 AM on October 3, 2005


this FPP post is biased, by accusing sfgate of having altered an image -- which they didn't admit, and most importantly, didn't actually do.

that's worse than bias, that's a lie.
posted by piranha at 1:58 AM on October 3, 2005


But this simple analysis reveals the very subtle but insidious type of bias that occurs in the media all the time. The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn't tell you the whole truth.

Yeah, as if zombietime's tired schtick of deliberate focusing on the wackos at parades and rallies gives him the moral high ground to preach from when it comes to "telling the whole truth." When he starts posting photos of moderates at rallies in attending proportion to the number of wacko photos he posts, then I'll start listening.

By the way, I was at the Love Parade. The "How Berkeley Can You Be" parade runs right in front of my apartment. His photos of those two events weren't even close to being representative. Pot, kettle.

What a wanker.

P.S. It must suck to post so many photos from an event and not come up with one remotely as good as the one posted by the Chron.
posted by DaShiv at 1:59 AM on October 3, 2005


I also like the way he equates the Palistinian flag with 'obscene gestures'. That lets you in on his mindset better than anything else.
posted by Mrs.Doyle at 2:06 AM on October 3, 2005


Cropped != altered. This is standard practice in the media (though even zombietime suggests it's unlikely there was a substantive crop) and anyone who doesn't already know this should do some remedial media literacy work.

To say that the Chronicle unfairly represented the protest as mainstream and "safe," whatever that means, is at least as fair as the opposite charge: that zombietime's photos unfairly represented the protest as extremist and full of kooks.
posted by chrominance at 2:11 AM on October 3, 2005


"Now we can see that the girl is just one of several teenagers, all wearing terrorist-style bandannas covering their faces."
posted by euphorb at 2:14 AM on October 3, 2005


I didn't want to visit LGF today but someone was nice enough to bring it with them. Thanks!
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:20 AM on October 3, 2005


Photo 1: young woman protester, emotive bandana obscuring the lower face, gesture of defiance, indistinct but crowded scene behind

Photo 2: 5 young protestors, all wearing the same bandana print, corralled and organised by an adult for maximum exposure

Result: profit! striking but disingenuous photograph

I don't know who's side I'm on here, cameras never lie but photographers don't tell you the truth.
Welcome to the world of news photographers; because real life just isn't interesting enough.
posted by NinjaPirate at 2:55 AM on October 3, 2005


Ha, I love zombie's "analysis" of the photo. It is amazing that he/she? made all these assumptions based on some flimsy photographic evidence. Maybe he knows some facts about the groups involved or maybe he is just making some obviously biased assumptions. But it is important to point out that at no time does he actually ASK people in the group what they represent? How do you go from the fact that someone wears a t-shirt with a star on it to the assumption that they belong to a communist org? I'm taking a wild assumption here that zombie is a detective on the same par with Inspector Clouseau.
posted by JJ86 at 3:02 AM on October 3, 2005


The analysis that really caught my eye was:

Now we can see that the girl is just one of several teenagers, all wearing terrorist-style bandannas covering their faces.

What the fuck? Terrorist style bandannas? The ones that read, "People of Color say, 'No to War!'"???
posted by velacroix at 3:06 AM on October 3, 2005


There's some saying about taking the beam out of your own eye before taking the mote out of someone else's. I would have thought that a photographer of all people might have remembered it.

Also, zombietime is a pisspoor photographer.
posted by Hogshead at 3:19 AM on October 3, 2005


I demand to know why every picture taken of George Bush standing in the Rose Garden is cropped so tightly that you can't see the melting polar ice caps.
posted by digaman at 3:28 AM on October 3, 2005


Is this liberal bias, or just a case of too much artistic license?

Um, no.
posted by Happy Monkey at 3:36 AM on October 3, 2005


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