Iran’s Missile Shot Photo is Doctored in Hoax; Revolutionary Guards are dangerous Photoshoppers
July 10th, 2008 . by Marty
Did you wake up this morning and see this top picture in your local paper? If you live in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or watch MSNBC, you did. Attributed to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (apparently, the new Reuters as a source of photojournalism), the picture was obviously doctored (AP just released the second picture). It’s clear that the smoke patterns of the missile in the middle were clumsily copied from those on the right. Video of the same event showed that only three missiles fired simultaneously (anyone with a hint of military experience knows that the odds of getting four missiles to fire simultaneously enough for a photo-op are slim). The Israeli media have already picked up on the story, but let’s wait for the slew of inevitable retractions and handwringing coming from the US media who ran the photos. (unless they did it on purpose, just to give a second-day story to how the Revolutionary Guard are a threat to the international photoshop industry. It’s hard to see a photo editor not catching this obvious deceit in about five seconds.) Either way, it will be a distraction from the very real threat posed by Iran. If you live in Tel Aviv, it won’t matter if you get hit by three or four missiles.
Of course, maybe it was someone at AP who put out the fake? If what they say is now true and Sepah News (the Revolutionary Guards) put out the second photo, then it does beg the question of who doctored the first. I’m sure that there are already spunky young bloggers hot the trail of this hoax.
Update: Photorants just posted a great piece on the controversy wherein he quotes the New York Times as saying:
As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a fact that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.
I find it hard to believe that not a single photo editor at the LATimes, NYTimes, Chicago Trib, etc. noticed the doctored photo.
Thanks Martin for the kind words about Photorants.
You did a great piece on this also. It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one who thinks this story as reported by the MSM is a bit fishy.
Dean Tomasula
[…] recall that in yesterday’s post I was one of the first in the States to point out the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s hoaxing […]
Brilliant!
[…] my name is because I have used this very blog to uncover several hoaxes, including the case of the photo-shopped Iranian missile picture, in which I was the first American to notice that the picture was a hoax. I urge people not to be […]