How is a publicity photo of a journalist substantively different from a photo-journalist's document of an event, if news organizations expect the public to trust "accuracy in news reporting"? Faking a photo is a willful perpetration of a hoax. One might quibble about the degree of significance attending a given photo fraud, but a fake photo published by a news organization is a fake photo published by a news organization regardless.
And if they'll lie about something like this, how is anyone ever supposed to have confidence they aren't lying about more important matters? CBS has some explaining to do.
HuffPo passes along the exposé at TVNewser, and refers to this recent highly publicized foto-fakery.
It's not the first time CBS News has been caught faking what it shows to the public. There was the video insertion of CBS logos into a broadcast of New Year's 2000 events in Times Square.
And then at ABC News there was the infamous incident in 1994, wherein Cokie Roberts pretended to be reporting from Capitol Hill while in fact she was actually in the ABC studio, wearing a coat, and standing in front of a screen with a rear-projected image of the Capitol behind her.
And, of course, it's not that news organizations don't lie routinely (insert your own Blitzer/Koppel/Brokaw/FOX anecdote here - or pick from the many choices available here). But after awhile, it's not the lies that are so distressing anymore, it's their insulting obviousness, and especially in conjunction with the cavalier arrogance of the deceiving organization, which infuriates.
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