Thursday, July 10, 2008

Just Breaking, Iranian Fauxtography Scandal

Malkin posted the story less than 30 minutes ago, but it has been building for some time now.

At least some of the images provided by the Iranian government about the missile launches this week have been shown to be FAKES. And looking at some of the images, I have my doubts that the images provided in so many papers were even from this year.

Looking at Snapped Shot, I notice something about the altered photo, and the image from 2006. They both have one legitimate rocket with a yellowish exhaust trail, surrounded by missiles with a white exhaust trail. This makes me wonder if the "Launch pictures" from this week are merely recirculated images from 2006.

Unfortunately there aren't enough ground features to determine if this is the case since the angle that pictures were taken from are so different. My suspicion is that the image from 2008 is simply a picture of the two furthest left rockets, and the yellow smoke rocket from a different angle, with the addition of a horribly faked 4th rocket, but without further in depth research, I can't be sure.

Kaminger shows reason to think otherwise, as the 2006 image did in fact show up almost unaltered again this week.

H/T: Malkin, Snapped Shot