Obama in a sea of people - creative editing from the folks at AP.

NY Times, Salem News, KPIC ^ | 5/18/2008 | Larry Rohter

[xDGx]

[quote]Obama Draws Record Crowd in Oregon

An estimated 75,000 gathered on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland on Sunday to see Barack Obama. “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words, as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river.[/quote]

Two pictures were included to show Obama in a sea of people:

[Prole]

Thanks for the head's up.

An Australian newspaper's blog is posting the shaped photos for folks to comment on:

From the Australian newspaper's site:

The Sydney Morning Herald's White House 2008 page:

http://blogs.smh.com.au/whitehouse08/archives/2008/05/obama_the_oregon_trail_and_the.html

[Prole]

Incidentally, that site is not a free-for-all blog.

It appears to be officially controlled by the staff at SMH.

From the bottom of the SMH article and AP photos:

"Posted by SMH Online May 19, 2008 1:21 PM"

Another shaped AP photo from the site:

[cyberella]

The same kind of terrorists who did this support Barack Obama. An awesome video every America should be required to view:

http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/

[newfreep]

So the bottom line is simply the normal size for the annual Blues festival/boat regatta w/free beer and music with some photoshopping to appear larger?

[bert]

The crowd looks Hitleresque to me

[ajodl]

Obama.

Let me see if I have this straight.

His father was Kenyan, Moslem, black. We have seen pictures of his African 'family.'

His mother is a white, atheistic Kansan.

Where are the pictures of his Kansan, white mother and his white grandparents who raised him?

His father deserted his mother and him when he was very young and went back to his family in Kenya.

His mother returned to Hawaii and he was raised by his white Kansan grandparents.

HE later went to the best and costliest schools. How?

He lives in a $1.4 million dollar house that he aquired through a deal with a wealthy fund raiser. How?

He 'worked' as a civil rights activist in Chicago. The presidency is not a civil rights post nor is it subject to affirmative action set asides.

He entered politics at the state level and then the national level without minimal experience.

He is proud of his 'African heritage' but it seems that his only African connection was that his African father got a white girl pregnant and then deserted her. I didn't know that sperm carried a 'cultural' gene. Where is the pride in his white culture?

He goes to a 'Afrocentric' church that hates whites, hates jews, and blames America for all the world's perceived faults and then repeatedly covers up for the pastor and the church.

He claims that he could not confront his pastor but he wants us to believe that he can confront North Korea and Iran.

Yes, I fail miserably at attempting to see how he could be a uniter and bring us together.

I think that the 'hope' is that he hopes no one will be capable of asembling the pieces of this puzzle.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I'm no Obama supporter, but that's a darned good crowd. I don't think the photographer did anything underhanded or anything. I used a telephoto to flatten the crowd and cropped to cut out the dead part of the stadium steps, etc. I'll admit I get aggravated when photographers stage eight people together and crop tight to make it look like a big crowd, but 80,000 is a heck of a crowd. All they did was record it dramatically.

Drama and accuracy are two different animals. If you are trying to sell shots showing lots of people and their team (or voters and their messiah) then you present them in their most favorable light. If you are trying to report ACCURATELY on an event, you don't selectively edit your image to make it appear that it is something it is not. Everyone has an idea of the relative capacity of a stadium. It provides scope and scale to reference a crowd against. A limitless sea of people provides no such scale, no horizons or boundaries. Even in Texas stadiums do not extend to infinity. Nor in Portland do Obama rallies. AP (& the photo editors) are telling a story that is not there.

Playing fast & loose with numbers is an old canard (think 'Million Man March') and is a ploy to disillusion opposition. And like negative advertising, it works (sadly). Take a look at the weekend news photo leads and compare those of Obama with those of Clinton. Similar delegates in both states (51 vs. 52, IIRC) and one favors one candidate (by about 12 points) while the other favors the other (by a larger margin). Tell me the coverage is equal. Tell me the pictures coming out of each state are telling the same story. Tell me there is no bias in the people who are deciding which pictures get trotted out as 'objective news'. As for sports photography, I can slap a 300/2.8 on one of the Nikons and create drama too. But one is nothing more than wrasslin, while the other is determining the fate of a nation. Creative editing has no place in the news business.

Excellent discussion. Both of you are right, of course, in your own way - and IMHO both are wrong. RK is wrong in the way that xDGx explains, but xDGx is wrong in that last line.

The news business is all about editing. Journalists claim to be objective - which should be your first hint that they are nothing of the sort. Although the newspaper obviously predates the Revolution, it is not true that news - or even printing news - has remained the same business. The transformational technology was the telegraph, exploited by the Associated Press. Before the telegraph, printers lacked a source of news independent of physical transportation - and therefore were not in the business of telling people what was going on. They called them "newspapers" even back then - but only after the advent of the telegraph did they actually have a perishable commodity - news the public hadn't heard yet - to sell before its "sell by" date. The claim of journalistic objectivity traces back to the need of journalists in town A to sell news from town B when the newspaper in town A had no reporters in town B.

Journalists claim to be objective because it helps them sell their product. That is their interest, not "the public interest." Journalists have claimed to be objective ever since the Associated Press began, a century and a half ago; it is unlikely that anyone alive today even heard from her grandparents what it was like when newspapers actually were fractiously independent and didn't allow each other to claim to be objective. The more journalists are able to claim objectivity, the more certain we may be that they are not objective. They are selling something - the idea that whatever they know over the AP newswire is important simply because you haven't heard it yet. The news business is a propaganda business. Nothing more. Creative editing is only to be expected.

[The Great RJ]

They must have taken lessons in doctoring photos from Reuters. If you look closely in the crowd you can see the “green helmet” man and the woman whose house in several different parts of Lebanon was blown up repeatedly by Israeli bombs.

[af_vet_rr]

The fact remains that it was a bigger crowd than any Republican will get anywhere this year (2008), but still not any indication of what will happen in November.

I can't agree with this enough. Whether it was 50,000 or 75,000 people, McCain won't be drawing crowds like that. He's not that charismatic and he just doesn't draw in the young people who are willing to give up an afternoon like that.

Given that it's still technically a primary (although the only question left is when is Hillary dropping out), it's pretty amazing.

Thinking about it - this extended primary season has helped Obama a lot. Sure, Rush Limbaugh wanted people to vote for Hillary to "hurt the Democrats" (when in reality Rush stood to make a ton of money if Hillary would have gotten the nomination) and Rush kept saying it would hurt the Democrats, but Obama has now campaigned in states where the Republicans did not have to, and Obama now has organizations setup in those states who are going to be ready this fall. Given the state of McCain's fundraising and state-level organizations, I'd be pretty worried if I was running his campaign.

[xDGx]

That 'creative editing' is to be expected from the current lot of 'journalists' does not validate it as news.

Go back to the NC State Obama Rally images.

The cropped image presented as 'news'

The image that was not circulated showing a decidedly different message.

Now let's look at the The Elements of Journalism

http://www.answers.com/journalism&r=67

According to The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil, there are nine elements of journalism

In order for a journalist to fulfill their duty of providing the people with the information they need to be free and self-governing, they must follow these guidelines:

Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.

Its first loyalty is to the citizens.

Its essence is discipline of verification.

Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.

It must serve as an independent monitor of power.

It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

It must strive to make the significant interesting, and relevant.

It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

I submit to you that the 'creative cropping' (and now negative imagery of Hillary) used wholesale by the MSM in their adulative veneration of Obama is anything but journalism.

This of course is not news ;)

[null and void]

For it to more nearly mirror Revelation, Hillary!™ needs to be nearly successful in arranging a face-to-face meeting between Barrack Obama and Teddy Kennedy...

Revelation 13:3
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

[equaviator]

Change we can believe in?

[Marathoner]

What, no pictures of him throwing water bottles out to the fainting masses? Some messiah!

Maybe they came to see him pass out the loaves and the fishes.

[exit82]

"He turned the Evian into wine, dintja hear?"

Must be in the fifth Gospel. My copy only has four. ;)

[null and void]

Never thought he would be an American though.

Nor did I. The Bible is mute with regards to America.

Still, why not?

[null and void]

The fact remains that it was a bigger crowd than any Republican will get anywhere this year (2008)

There is a real Republican running? Where???

[roses of sharon]

(AP, 2004)"So if the reports about Oregon are true, and 60,000 people showed up for a Kerry rally, Karl Rove may have just lost the expectations game."

[null and void]

But .......... But ................ Where are all the torch carriers marching in formation?

Same place, three years in the future.

Whether they will be raising the other arm in a salute, or carrying pitchforks depends on how successful he is...

[xDGx]

That is a BRILLIANT picture! (too bad Kerry deleted the larger original from his blog) You are a gem! :)

And guess what a more tightly cropped shot looks like? (from the same source ;)

AP & Reuters should really be comparing this first of a kind record-shattering triumph to the latest first of a kind record-shattering triumph ;)

[null and void]

HE later went to the best and costliest schools. How?

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