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Mainstream Media NewsMedia News
USA Today Caught Altering Condi Photo
By Brad Taylor
Posted on: October 26, 2005
USA Today has been caught altering a photograph of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in order to make her look more sinister. These photos were brought to national attention thanks to The Pen.
The original USA Today photoshop version changed the appearance of Condi's eyes, giving them a darker, more sinister appearance.
Here is what the original photo looked like:
After the unsurprising uproar across the Internet, USA Today pulled the original photo with this explanation:
"Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards."
Really! You can see the article with this disclaimer at USA Today.
Based on the explanation of USA Today's editors, I did a Photoshop test on the unaltered photograph of Condoleezza Rice. According to their explanation, this was a simple matter of using a sharpening filter without noticing the effect upon the eyes. This means I should be able to take the photo then apply the sharpening filter until the eyes look like those published in the USA Today photo.
In the photo below, I applied the sharpening filter to the right half of the photograph, with the unaltered photo on the left. Before the eyes reached the point seen in USA Today's photo, the rest of Condi's face began to degrade. Any further application of the sharpening filter will seriously degrade the rest of the photograph. This demonstrates that the only way to achieve the results seen in the USA Today photo is to isolate the eyes (by using a selection tool) and applying the filter only to the eyes!
This is another reminder that we must cast a skeptical eye to anything published about conservatives in the national media.
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