Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

You’ll recall that in yesterday’s post I was one of the first in the States to point out the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s hoaxing of a missile photograph. As I predicted, there has been “the slew of inevitable retractions and handwringing coming from the US media.” And as I further suggested yesterday, there are now a mountain of second-day stories milking the doctored-photo angle to show that the Iranians have overblown their whole missile program.

This is exactly what I was afraid of. There were very talented photo editors at newspapers across the country - to say nothing of AFP/Getty and AP - who I’m quite certain had their doubts about the veracity of the photo and let it slip into their pages, knowing that they could always blame Iran and the Revolutionary Guards if the photo turned out to be fake. I know a lot of bloggers in Israel and the US are claiming credit for being the first to ‘out’ the photo. But they bicker over that credit at their own peril.

The photo was so obviously fake (insert ‘it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out’ joke here), I’m quite certain that at least 5% of the people who saw it worldwide figured there was something wrong with it the moment they saw it. The real question is why more people didn’t notice it right away - particularly the ones whose jobs it is to notice fake photographs going into their newspapers.

(I’m wrapped up in something now, but I’ll have Jimmy add appropriate links later today.)