Propaganda

Unemployed journalists, check it out. Want to do enterprising, investigative journalism and get paid for it? Freedom, a magazine published by the Church of Scientology since 1968, is looking to hire experienced journalists to further their mission of "Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest," according to news site TrueSlant. The ad has been joke fodder for TrueSlant and Reddit among others, but it also raises a serious question; is Freedom actually journalism,...Go to full story

On October 9, on freerepublic.com, Vietnamese blogger DieuVan Nguyen argued that a news photo implicating two Vietnamese journalists was a fake: Nguyen reports that Dantri.com, a Vietnamese online paper, had published a story about two journalists arrested for assault.

The accompanying photo of an injured man features a timestamp dated 9/10/2009 (October 9, 2009—dates are traditionally written day/month/year in most countries, including Vietnam).  But,...Go to full story

The Quackometer, a blog commenting on pseudoscience, reported this week on such a blatantly bad story in the London-based Daily Mail, that it almost doesn’t seem real:  “Can this man cure cancer with his bare hands?” the paper asks of “psychic healer” Adrian Pengelly in its headline. The answer should be a decided “No he cannot,” according to scientific evidence.  Anecdotes from Pengelly's clients who feel they have been...Go to full story

In 2001, the Newseum in Washington DC first posted an ongoing online exhibition titled, "The Commissar Vanishes: The falsification of photographs in Stalin's Russia." They describe it as "a virtual exhibit exploring the censored history of the Soviet Union."

The Newseum describes itself as offering "visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits." In the...Go to full story

July 1, 2009, Korea Beat posts new photos of Kim Jong-il, from Chosun.com that bloggers claim are most likely Photoshopped. Korea Beat commenter, Teadrinker wrote: "They expect us to believe he’s gained 20 pounds and reversed 10 years of aging over the last two months?'   Allegations that the North Korean leader’s political stunts include fake photos have intensified since last year’s stories about his serious illness. Now with new information...Go to full story

Epoch Times reports Zhang Bin, the Director of China Photographers Association, discovered birds were added by Photoshop into a China's People's Daily photograph, June 26. Bin used pairs of colored circles to indicate where birds in the original photograph were duplicated and then inserted elsewhere in the picture to supplement the look of nature in a park scene. The original caption explains: “Nanning in Guangxi Province is honored as China’s green city....Go to full story

While news about Neda Agha Soltan's tragic death on the streets of Iran evoke global shock and sadness, questions also arise about the authenticity of the video. UK's Sky News posts a second video that seems to support the authenticity of the original video circulating the Internet. The video footage shows a woman and a man, with the same clothing and physical appearance as Neda and her music teacher.  Sky News writes: "Neda Agha Soltan's death was captured on...Go to full story

You don’t have to know any Chinese, to notice that symbols are missing when comparing the two photos of a solemn WWII Taiwanese memorial ceremony shown above. What happened? The photo on right, a detail, was originally published in United Daily News (UDN). It shows a wooden memorial sign held during a ceremony, meant to commemorate Taiwanese soldiers who fought and died in Papua New Guinea during World War II. In traditional Chinese lettering, the sign states: “The...Go to full story

Prachatai reports, "A former PAD [People Alliance for Democracy] guard grabbing the hair of a red-shirt woman and dragging her along the road during the military crackdown in April has won the Best Photo of the Year Award from the Mass Media Photographers Association of Thailand (MPA)."

On June 14, MPA announced that "35 prizes of about 700,000 baht", Thai currency (about $30,000), was awarded to winners chosen from among a total of 600 photos...Go to full story

Gabriel Synder's blog post on Gawker offers the best report, in StinkyJournalism's view, about the new Iranian fake photo flap.

The badly Phooshopped photo above, allegedly shows a pro-Ahmadinejad rally. The circles illustrate areas where the audience was multiplied via copy and pasting--called cloning in Photoshop--allegedly to increase the crowd size.

"Frostbite," comments on Gawker: "They just have one of their pundits report...Go to full story