Patterico's Pontifications

12/5/2005

Breaking News: MoveOn.org Dishonest, and Sun Rises Yet Again

Filed under: Scum,War — Patterico @ 6:28 am



Via Michelle Malkin comes this interesting link. The guy caught MoveOn.org photoshopping a photo of British soldiers getting Thanksgiving dinner, to put American-style camouflage pants on one of them (in reality, he had shorts on). This made it look like the soldiers were really American, when in reality they were British. The photo was used in an ad about American soldiers not being home for Thanksgiving.

I went to the MoveOn.org site and saw that they have changed the photo back to the original. Too late to evade the notice of the blogosphere! Wizbang also caught a still of the photoshopped picture, before MoveOn.org airbrushed their deception.

I know: it’s shocking, the idea that MoveOn.org would be dishonest. Still, you have to document it, even if it’s predictable.

UPDATE: Commenter Milhouse notes that the British soldiers would have no particular reason to be eating “Thanksgiving” dinner. I have stricken the word from the post, and thank him for the correction.

5 Responses to “Breaking News: MoveOn.org Dishonest, and Sun Rises Yet Again”

  1. …and we’re back to arguing whether or not Michael Moore’s having changed the appearance of the LTE heading constitutes “dishonesty” in F911. (Insignificant switch from pants to shorts and back) + (text is correct anyway) + (mock outrage over nonissue) = much ado about nothing.

    Is this really the best that you’ve got? Perhaps it’s time to MoveOn… (which, by the way, I no longer support financially or with membership, mostly because as you can see, the ads are lame, overwhelmingly negative, and ineffective).

    Tom (eb6b88)

  2. “British soldiers getting Thanksgiving dinner”? I don’t think so. Whatever meal they were having, it wasn’t that. To British soldiers there’s nothing special about the 4th Thursday of November, and no particular reason why they’d want to be home on that day, as opposed to any other.

    Milhouse (74db9b)

  3. I am a shocked, SHOCKED, to find myself defending MoveOn.org, but there is.

    Look, media companies use stock footage all the time. A photo ad about how happy a couple is to get a new loan was shot originally for a condom ad. Documenaries about the battle of Midway show stock footage of dogfights over Iwo Jima (I made both of those example up, don’t ask me where they came from).

    This is just typical media work. We can argue about whether that is a good way to do things or not, but it isn’t really fair to trash MoveOn.org for doing what everyone else does all the time.

    There is so much else to trash that organization on. How about the irony of their name? They thought the criticism of Clinton was over the top and politically motivated; they wanted to “move on”. Now they are among the most over-the-top, politically-motivated critics of Bush.

    Doc Rampage (47be8d)

  4. Tom,

    It was a photoshopped image. A Los Angeles Times photographer was fired for similar conduct. Photos are like quotes: you don’t alter them.

    Milhouse: touche. I have updated the post.

    Doc: What the heck are you talking about? This isn’t a complaint about stock footage. It’s a complaint about a misleading photoshopped picture.

    Patterico (806687)

  5. It was a photoshopped picture in an advertisement. No one expects advertisements to be accurate. They could have have taken that picture in a studio in LA with a bunch of actors in costume and it wouldn’t have mattered.

    Doc Rampage (b7bb1a)


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