Iran’s digital duping
By Chris Gaylord | 07.10.08
Yesterday’s Iranian missile tests escalated tensions between the Islamic Republic and Israel. A single image captured this bold gesture for many news outlets: four missiles blasting toward the sky.
The photo ran on several front pages Thursday morning, including The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and LA Times, as well as the websites of MSNBC, BBC, and The New York Times.
But the picture was fraud – digitally embellished before the Agence France-Presse photo service circulated it around the world. Only three missiles launched at the time of the photograph, a fact unknown to many Western newsrooms until “The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile,” reports the NY Times.
There was another missile on the ground – Iran launched at least 9 missiles yesterday – but someone copied and pasted parts of the other billows to forge the fourth.
(’Edited’ image courtesy AFP/HO/Sepah News. ‘Original’ image courtesy AFP/HO/Jamejam Online.)
In the fake, the flaming tail of the second missile directly matches that of the third. And the dust cloud below the third mirrors the fourth.
Agence France-Presse retracted the photo this morning and says it received the manipulated image from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s news website, Sepah News.
There have been past allegation that Iran’s state media forges or at least fiddles with its images. But, according to the Times, “it can’t be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance.” We can’t rule out the possibility that this was just some photographer or editor acting on his own.
Last August, the Monitor and image expert Hany Farid pulled together a video on how to spot Photoshop fakes. Here’s the link.
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2. dale | 07.10.08
timmy… and according to your posted site, manipulators, including the Iran missile shot, should be called out!
4. Bubba_Brutus | 07.10.08
in response to Timmy and : “So What?”
The problem with all this is that these missile launches are then used as excuses to escalate the situation. Our administration and the Israeli’s know the true weakness and inaccuracies of these missile launches but rather than state the truth, they call for more missile defense spending and how Iran cannot be dealt with diplomatically. This is a gross escalation to War, while the Iranians are trying to save face and show the rest of the Arab world that they can stand on their own, the West, especially the Bush administration, will use any excuse to blindly go to War. It is pitiful, for both sides. God save us all if these lunatics continue to play with our futures.
5. Joe D | 07.10.08
This is great… doesn’t make a whole lot of difference any way, if they managed to send off the other 3… unless of course, the other 3 are fake… Of course, I’m sure they have nuclear capability as well… just like Iraq had WMDs. We should invade!
6. Whys | 07.10.08
The doctored image makes for a better photo, plain and simple. Does it matter who changed it? Does it change what matters? I’m more concerned by those so eager to make mountains out of mole hills.
7. Bob Freund | 07.10.08
Let them test as many as they want. It’d be that many less they could use. One or three made to look like four, four to look like eight. What’s the difference? One is too many so let them blow it off in a test.
8. Ponch | 07.10.08
The New York Times did not break this story. It was first covered at Little Green Footballs.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30597_Irans_Photoshopped_Missile_Launch
9. Chuck | 07.10.08
This is another example of real life following fiction.
Does anyone remember the digital fakery which was central to Michael Crichton’s 1992 book, Rising Sun? In that story, Crichton predicts that digital images will be manipulated in ways that render suspect many of our previously held concepts of truth.
10. HelloDare | 07.10.08
Little Green Footballs had this story first.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30597_Irans_Photoshopped_Missile_Launch
Iran’s Photoshopped Missile Launch
Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 6:13:47 pm PDT
Time to update the article, don’t you think?
11. Dar ul Harb | 07.10.08
The “unaltered” version in your animation is different from the”unaltered” version shown in the New York Times’ blog, which was actually a photo taken moments earlier than the source image of the altered version, and does not match exactly in angle or zoom. Your “unaltered” version matches the altered version exactly (except for the manipulation). Is it a “photo illustration” or reconstruction of what the source image must have looked like?
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1. timmy | 07.10.08
So what? Our photo editors fake things all the time.
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/