Deep Currents

Who believes a photo these days? If you do, you shouldn’t, because now even Uncle Sam is in the game of publishing doctored images as if they were real. Two soldiers were killed by another soldier on base in Iraq, and the images that the Army released were exactly identical except for the heads. But it was noticed by the blog Museum of Hoaxes, then picked up by BoingBoing, where it gained exposure to a reasonably broad audience. In a sense there’s nothing new happening here. Digital photos have always been manipulable. But this incident, along with Iran’s use of a doctored photo to cover up its failed missile launch, highlights both how easy it is to publish spin on the Internet and how easy it is to spotlight.

Written: September 25th, 2008