When TV Anchors Fib

When TV Anchors Fib

This incident reminds me of a debate we had at our high school newspaper. The debate when like this. Suppose you had a picture of someone. And that someone was facing to the right, like:

  +-------+
  |       |
  |  ===> |
  |       |
  +-------+

Now, suppose the hole for the photo was here:

  +--------------------+
  | ............ +-----+
  | ............ |Hole |
  | ............ +-----+
  | ...................|
  +--------------------|

It's not esthetically pleasing to drop the above photo into the above hole -- the picture would be looking off page. That's a layout no-no. So, what to do? Well, if there was no text in the photo, one could simply reverse the negative and print it again. Everything would come out backwards, and the person would be now looking onto the page, exactly what you needed.

As I said, at the time, this was a real stumper. Now it's pretty clear to me. Don't do it. Yeah, it's that simple. Don't. Why? Because, if the photo is ever found to have been manipulated you will be giving up one of your most important assets -- your credibility. If you could flip a photo to make it fit, what else would you do?

In my eyes, you start with small games like this and progress to staged shots like the link above points to. And, as Bernard Goldberg explains, when the news media pulls stunts like this, they lose credibility. Which is only their most important asset.