Fake crowd scenes and photos Iraq
The Evening Standard Doctored Photos
2003
Simone Moore would like to report a massive display in propaganda that
appeared in the evening edition of the Evening Standard, Wednesday the 9th
April.
The front page has a massive photo on it with the heading 'Jubilation on the
streets of Baghdad FREEDOM'
The photo is a still taken from BBC News 24. This massive image has been
very obviously doctored in a programme such as Photoshop. The image features
a massive crowd of Iraqi's celebrating in the streets, HOWEVER in the mid
and background it is possible to see how numerous photo's have been cut and
pasted together to create the illusion of there being a massive crowd
present.
In the background there is a white object (very possibly a turban) that
appears three times. In the background exactly the same bent tubular object
(possibly an arm in a white shirt) appears twice. In the mid to background
section (to the right hand side) a man in a white shirt appears facing the
camera, further on to the left the man appears with his head facing the
left. This man has been photographed twice, one shortly after the other.
In the background it is possible to see a 'blurring tool' has been used to
blur the cut and pastes used to doctor the photograph. It is also possible
to see the usage of numerous photographs (as least 2) as they have been
taken at slightly different angles and strange lines of sight appear in the
image.
Although we have seen jubilation crowds celebrating in Baghdad, none of them
have been of this quantity and when the head title reads 'FREEDOM' I wonder
when the press will just report the news instead of manipulating it to suit
their image.
The source of the image is footage from the BBC. The Standard's paperboys were obviously allowed to clone and blur the image in numerous ways to make it look like a gigantic crowd. This was first exposed Simone Moore and posted on the UK Indymedia site. The image below is a dissection of the fakery by an IndyMedia user called Gnu and a Memory Hole reader called Daedalus.
The red circles show a man in a turban who appears three times. The purple circles highlight an unknown object that appears four times (it's smudged in its rightmost incarnation). The darker blue circles show two instances of an identical white object, disembodied arm, and partial male faces. The yellow ovals show a partial male face and another one or two objects that appear as a group thrice. Similarly, the orange ovals highlight some sort of conglomeration that was duplicated. The two lighter blue circles are around an indistinct blob that appears on top of itself, while the bright green circles show yet another man who appears twice in the scene.
The black circles show something a little different. Obviously, two different still-frames from the footage were used, because the man with sunglasses and white, open-collar shirt appears twice but in a different pose, as do the men on either side of him.
The green line indicates where the image was clumsily smudged in order to cover up the fact that it had been stitched together.
Above: the coloured circles mark the suspect areas. Whilst below: the photo
as it appeared in London's Evening Standard
And take a look at the guy who's just to the right of center. His forearm is unnaturally long and very strangely shaped, becoming razor-thin at the wrist. What is this, a Salvador Dalí painting?
