The Truth Will Out

The truth is a funny thing. Truth has a variable definition. It can be skewed by perspective, ignorance, or a willful disregard for the facts. It can also be distorted by PhotoShop.

(A note here: Adobe PhotoShop is certainly a name well recognized among users of photo-editing software; other such software exists.)

Such is the case with a photo out of a rural area of China, courtesy of the user-friendly World Wide Web, on which was published recently a poorly doctored photo of three men inspecting a road construction project. The photo was actually two photos, clearly different, that the photographer decided needed to be put together and presented as one. Trouble was, the two photos were sufficiently different as to be instantly recognizable as being different and so looked decidedly amateurish. It didn't help, either, that the men appeared to be levitating several inches off the ground.

What's the harm here? Surely most people who look at the photo can tell it has been altered. The photo certainly made the rounds on the Internet, spawning screeds of commentary and a plethora of parodies. But whether people are convinced by the sincerity of what the photo is allegedly showing isn't the point; rather, the point is that a photograph, like a news story, is a representation of what actually happened. This was not a marketing exercise, in which an advertisement was created with the intent of convincing potential buyers to become actual buyers. This was a simple depiction of a simple event, yet the photographer for some reason felt the need to alter what he had created and present a new creation, one of a slightly altered reality.

It's certainly all too easy these days to do the same, taking photos of real life, slapping on fancy graphics or captions and sending the resulting concoction off to friends and family alike, for the purpose of amusement. (And this is all too easy to do in the age of social media and cool new technology tools — in some cases, you can go through the whole process using the one tool that you normally carry around with you, the smartphone.) Again, that is something that is, more or less, instantly recognizable as not the real thing.

A similar instance occurred in the same country, China, a few years ealier. A photographer submitted for newspaper publication a shot of a couple dozen antelope meandering underneath a railway overpass, seemingly oblivious to the industrial evolution that had occurred to produce the structure overhead. Now, the newspaper editor should have taken as the first clue the fact that the photo also showed a train speeding along the very overpass underneath which the antelope were meandering along. Surely such noise and otherwise pollution would have been enough to have scared the poor beasties into a trot back into their natural habitat. But the photo was published, and only later did it emerge that the photo was, in fact, two shots spliced together. (Seems that an alert reader noticed a fault line in the photo, in addition to the seemingly obliviousness of the antelope.)

In that case, the editor resigned and the photographer undoubtedly struggled to find other work. The consequences, other than those suffered by the two newspaper employees, were relatively small, unless you count the loss of face suffered by the newspaper, which must have been a bit much. Still, the harm done was relatively small.

The same cannot be said to be true for Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian president eventually lost control of his kingdom in a popular uprising that booted him from the presidential palace after 30 years in fiercely autocratic power. The power of social media was cited repeatedly in the success of the Egyptian protesters to mobilize and circumvent the government's Internet blackout, firing into crowds in Tahrir Square, and other attempts to maintain Mubarak's hold on power.

Several months before the beginning of Mubarak's end, the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram ran a photograph of a group of world leaders attending Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. In the photo, Mubarak was leading U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas down a red carpet at the White House. Further bolstering Mubarak's clout, the headline on the photo and accompany story was The Way to Sharm el-Sheikh. That would be Egypt's grand port city, home to one of Mubarak's palaces and where the former president is still holed up, awaiting release from hospital so the interim government can try him on charges that could result in the death penalty.

Trouble was, Mubarak wasn't in the lead in that photo. No, that photo was taken in the White House and, naturally, the American president was leading the procession. Not content with the facts, Al-Ahram doctored the photo, moving Mubarak to the head of the procession. Not sure what the editor was thinking in publishing the photo in that way in such wide release because the alteration was soon outed among the Twitterati and other world media outlets. Still, said publication of said doctored photo probably had everything to do with a presidential order and nothing much to do with portraying the truth as it happened.

Those last three words, as it happened, are the key in all of this. We trust our news sources to present us with an unfiltered presentation of the events that occurred as they occurred, so news stories contain facts and news photographs contain snapshots in real time. If we cannot trust in such portrayals of truth, then we should really fear for our own education because we can't possibly be everywhere at once and witness all of the world events about which we want to keep informed. Perhaps we need to adopt the mantra of "Trust but Verify" and seek out multiple sources in our search for the truth. Today's social media certainly make such a task easier than it used to be. Ever vigilant, we must be on the lookout for subtle (or obvious) "crafting" of the truth, however.