Egad.
As if Bashar Assad doesn’t have enough P.R. headaches right now. Sana, Syria’s state-run news service, published this bizarre handout fauxtograph of Assad swearing in the new governor of Hama.
Sana has a high resolution image (via The Atlantic Wire) you can check out more closely.
Washington Post photo editors commented that Assad’s right foot appears in front of the table leg, then add that the photo:
looks as if someone selected the the bodies and heads with the lasso tool and then adjusted the contrast and brightness, leaving a black outline at the tool’s selection boundary.
Ouch.
The Guardian also dogpiled on with other damning points:
The Guardian’s imaging expert David McCoy believes two pictures have been merged to make it seem like the men are in the same room, with the one on the right positioned fractionally higher than the one on the left. This becomes clearer when you look closely at the floor, which is distorted. The right hand side of the picture has been stretched downwards into place to line up with the left side (which is not distorted).
So instead of the news being Hama has a new governor, the discussion is instead, The Syrians are doctoring photos.
Last year, when Al-Ahram doctored a White House photo of President Mubarak, the paper’s chief editor claimed the image was illustrative of Mubarak’s leadership role.
You know what happened to Mubarak.
If Syria’s stooping to photoshopping handout photos like this, Assad must be doomed.
