John McCain: Claims of 911 Fauxtography are Faux

McCain's pin is not photoshopped:
Why we must hold both bloggers and MsM accountable
Rhonda Roland Shearer
Stinky Journalism

The blogger carefully examined a set of photos of presidential candidates McCain and Obama at 9/11 ceremonies at Ground Zero. Obama was clearly wearing his flag pin, however McCain, the blogger pointed out, was only wearing a pin in one photo but not in others.

Matt Collins wrote on his blog, Collins Onovia, “I happened to notice something interesting. It looks to me like someone photoshopped a flag onto McCain. As far as I could find, there were no other photos with the flag.”

“Take a look at the following pictures,” he continued. “Do you think this flag pin was photoshopped?” he asked. (See figures 1A-1D.)




Like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, the little guys—Collins/“Jerry” mice go after the huge “Tom” cats of inaccurate journalism. (See figure 1E.)

Most of the time, StinkyJournalism’s efforts to fact-check bloggers’ claims of fake photos score Bloggers 1 vs. Mainstream Media (MsM) 0. The doctored, staged or miscaptioned “fauxtograph” is eventually confirmed in our investigations.

In the wild and wooly bloggersphere of often rude discourse, this sincere effort by bloggers to debunk photos pulling the wool over the public’s eyes is refreshing, even noble in our view. The Internet leveled the playing field. The once truthful maxim citing the folly of fighting anyone who owns a barrel of ink no longer holds.

However, lately I ran into two counter examples that I felt should be noted. One of the two is Collins’ case of the supposed photoshopped pin on McCain’s jacket’s left lapel. The second case I will leave for another article. It involves a photo of a dying man in a hospital room that bloggers publicly questioned.

Continue reading: McCain's pin is not photoshopped: Why we must hold both bloggers and MsM accountable.


[ED. NOTE: The remainder of this story reads like a mini-detective novel. It's a good example of how one lone person, sitting in the seclusion of their office, with only their Internet connection and computer, can fact-check and out-perform both the MSM and the blogosphere.]


by Rhonda Roland Shearer
images: Stinky Journalism
Source: McCain's pin is not photoshopped: Why we must hold both bloggers and MsM accountable