Fox & Friends: We Distort, Then Deride?
Fox & Friends airs altered photos of NY Times reporters
Man! Fox & Friends don't get no respect. Last year they got torn up for repeating false claims about Obama being muslim, and got sued for slander by a school superintendent in a non-political case when they ran a parody story then claimed it was true. The lawsuit got thrown out by a judge who said they were just gullible and unprofessional, but it's kind of sad when that's your defense.
"Unprofessional" does seem a good word for this latest controversy with the photoshopped photos. This case wouldn't be so offensive if they were actually funny about it, or at least went out of their way to make it obvious. The third image -- showing their heads photoshopped over a photo of a man walking his poodle -- is sufficiently blatant that it's not being criticized widely. Right, right, people get that, it's a joke. The outrage isn't about that, it's about the hack job face distortions that walk the line of making them uglier without being blindingly obvious. They aren't exactly hard to tell, at least as someone who has "seen some 'shops in my time", but that speaks more to the incompetence of the artist, as there wasn't any tell-tale for the wider audience that isn't familiar with photoshop edits.
If you're curious, the article by Jaques Steinberg that is characterized as an attack dog piece against Fox News in the NY Times can be found here: Fox News Finds Its Rivals Closing In
Man! Fox & Friends don't get no respect. Last year they got torn up for repeating false claims about Obama being muslim, and got sued for slander by a school superintendent in a non-political case when they ran a parody story then claimed it was true. The lawsuit got thrown out by a judge who said they were just gullible and unprofessional, but it's kind of sad when that's your defense.
"Unprofessional" does seem a good word for this latest controversy with the photoshopped photos. This case wouldn't be so offensive if they were actually funny about it, or at least went out of their way to make it obvious. The third image -- showing their heads photoshopped over a photo of a man walking his poodle -- is sufficiently blatant that it's not being criticized widely. Right, right, people get that, it's a joke. The outrage isn't about that, it's about the hack job face distortions that walk the line of making them uglier without being blindingly obvious. They aren't exactly hard to tell, at least as someone who has "seen some 'shops in my time", but that speaks more to the incompetence of the artist, as there wasn't any tell-tale for the wider audience that isn't familiar with photoshop edits.
If you're curious, the article by Jaques Steinberg that is characterized as an attack dog piece against Fox News in the NY Times can be found here: Fox News Finds Its Rivals Closing In