Conspiracies Abound! Malkin and Drudge Ruffle Some Feathers

[Note: I had drafted a version of this article last night, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology and the fact that I was not typing in a program with an auto-save option, I lost it all. As they say, if at first you don't succeed, scream a few obscenities and try, try again.]

Is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a demon, or does she just play one on the internet?

The Web was abuzz with rumors and excitement yesterday as word circulated about the latest so-called “Left-wing” attempt at making the Right look bad. Bloggers, webmasters and forum watchers worldwide spent the day debating amongst themselves about Michelle Malkin’s latest commentary on USA Today’s supposedly suspicious use of photo-manipulation techniques.

A conservative columnist and regular contributor to Fox News, Malkin posted on her website copies of the following images, the first from the Associated Press and the second from USA Today’s website:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

As you can see, the USA Today image is clearly and undeniably different from the original photograph, but this is not the point. The question at hand is whether USA Today intentionally altered Rice’s picture to make her look “possessed” and “demonic,” or any of the other laughable adjectives conspiracy theorists all over the political spectrum are throwing around about her these days. This resulting backlash from Malkin’s blog entry should come as no surprise. After all, accusations of a liberal slant in the media always get attention when there are visual aids involved

Careful not to make any accusations against the paper herself, Malkin speaks through the commentary of the letter-writers she chooses to quote on her blog.

One commentator named “Steve I.,” who claims to have received an A.A. from the Colorado Institute of Art, is quoted as saying the following:

(1) Any filter in Photoshop would apply to the whole image. The absurd sharpening would bring out her necklines, the stripes in her shirt, her lips, her nostrils, her earrings, etc. So the image was deliberately manipulated around the eyes.

(2) Notice how the pupils have been narrowed, like a cat’s eyes. Sharpening would not alter the roundness of her pupils, only accentuate them. Another paint or erase tool is required to achieve that effect.

Whatever Steve received his degree in, chances are that it was not in graphic design. Both of the above assessments are laughable.

On the first note, it is indeed possible to filter just one part of a photograph, even with versions of Adobe Photoshop that are older than the copy of v. 5.5 that Steve uses.

Using “masks,” a term very familiar to users who are even just moderately experienced with Photoshop, artists can apply image filters (such as those for sharpening, brightening or creating contrast) that will only affect the unmasked sections of a given image.

In simple terms, a mask of an image is like a gray-scaled copy of it that is placed on top of the original image, although the mask is not visible in the photograph itself. The black parts of this invisible mask are opaque to filters, while the white sections are transparent and the gray sections are semi-transparent.

Imagine looking at a field (your main image) behind a fence (you mask). The wood of the fence would be the black part of the mask, while the gaps would be the white. If the filter of sunlight hits the fence, the light only affects those parts of the field not hidden by wood. As a result, the image of the field would appear unaffected in some places (the shadows) and affected in other places (the strips of light).

It is common practice for artists and photo editors to create masks that cover everything in a photograph but someone’s eyes. This allows for them to run simple, one-click filters on just those eyes, making them in many cases both brighter and sharper.

Here are the eyes of the original image and the doctored image:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

On the second point, Steve’s alleged ten years of experience with Adobe Photoshop obviously never led him to use sharpening or contrast filters. While the doctored eyes certainly look a little “cat-like,” it is absurd to say that this was done with the elaborate brushwork or erasing tools.

Below are the results of what I got when I took the original image and ran an unsharp mask on it. For the sake of effect, I used the maximum amount of sharpening with the maximum radius and no threshold. Of course, I did not select just the eyes, as you can see by the changes in Rice’s other facial features, but this is not the point. Instead the point here is that, unlike what Steve said in his commentary, there is no need to use brushes in order to change pupil and iris shape. Instead, this is a side-effect of changing the sharpness of the picture.

The Original Image

The Original Image, Now Doctored By Me

Obviously, this was not the only filter that USA Today used on the eyes, but as you can see here, even the simple use of an unsharp mask has made the them look “cat-like.”

So much for Steve’s expertise. It seems just a touch suspicious that Malkin has yet to publish any letters refuting Steve’s claims.

As for the claims of another commenter, “L.C.,” it is true that USA Today used more than just an unsharp mask to edit the look of the eyes. As you can see above, such a mask makes the eyes look very un-human, so of course more editing was done to make them look more realistic.

What L.C. neglects to mention is that newspapers will often brighten eyes just so that they appear normal on “dead tree” editions of the papers. While the photo editing certainly appears a bit excessive on the web, here is what the normal photograph and the doctored image would look like in newspaper print:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

In order to get these effects, I enlarged the original and doctored images until they were about 600 pixels wide and 473 pixels tall. This should be closer to their actual size prior to going to the Web.

Next, I grayscaled the first set of images and then used a halftone filter on them before bringing them down to the size you see above. For the second set of images, I simply used a color halftone before resizing again. Mind you, I used the weakest halftone I could get.

The images on the left represent what the original photograph might look like on paper, while the ones on the right depict the doctored image. Being that newspaper paper is low in quality and porous, chances are that the eyes in the first image would be very difficult to see in print. The second set of images now show clearer eyes.

These supposedly “demonic” photographic edits, then, were probably not part of a vast, Left-wing/USA Today conspiracy. With the evidence shown above, it looks more like the for-print photograph accidentally made it to the web.

This is one of the flaws of media convergence. Sometimes the wrong image goes to the wrong medium.

This is not to say that photographic doctoring is new to journalism. Indeed, sometimes magazines and newspapers make major ethical mistakes. While airbrushing and body part shifting is common place in fashion magazines, the real ethical problems lie in photo editing in relation to hard news.

There are countless examples of this taking place in the media, and for the most part, there have been no political ties associated with the editing. Below is one of the most famous examples of this, which took place during my childhood in 1994.

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

When the above issues of Newsweek and Time hit the newsstands simultaneously, it was easy to see that Time, perhaps in an effort to be dramatic, darkened their copy of former football player O.J. Simpson’s mugshot. Although race was likely not a motivating factor in this, many groups responded with anger, accusing Time of perpetuating the “brute” stereotype of African Americans.

To be sure, photo doctoring happens all of the time. This is not a justification of the matter, but it is a very important point to make. What USA Today did hardly seems unethical, despite what the likes of Michelle Malkin or Matt Drudge have to say. These two are not exactly bastions of journalistic ethics, themselves.

While Malkin picks and chooses her “evidence,” provided by pseudo-experts who just happen to agree with her, Drudge seems to accept any story as fact, regardless of the lack of details before him.

According to research conducted by media journal Brill’s Content after the President Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, Drudge claimed that 51 of his stories from January through September of 1998 were exclusives, although only 31 actually were. Of those 31, a full third contained glaring falsehoods, while another third consisted of questionable information that had yet to be authenticated. (Source: David McClintick–”The big extract: Drudge’s report card.” The Guardian, 31 Oct. 1998: 12.)

As for any “Right-wing” conspiracies in the news, it is only fair to make note of what I like to call the Republican Halo Phenomenon, something many forum-goers have been discussing since Malkin posted her blog entry. The RHP represents a plethora of pictures taken over the past few years where various republican leaders have been “haloed,” so to speak, by different objects. Is this meant to be subliminal? Possibly. Is this just a coincidence? In most cases, I would say so.

However, if you’d like to see some examples of President Bush haloed in a variety of ways, go to this Google Image Search.

Certainly, there are many folks at many different news organization who like to insert their political leanings into all that they do. Most journalists agree that these people, regardless of their politics, should be weeded out.

There are no vast, any-wing conspiracies lurking in the shadows like the bogeyman at night. There are only those individuals with persecution complexes thinking that the entire “other” political side is out to get them.

Ms. Malkin, Mr. Drudge and dear readers, please understand: the biggest conspiracies man sees in the world around him actually reside in his head.

[Special thanks to Thomas for helping me put the Photoshop information in laymen’s terms.]