Medium Fake

Here’s something to look forward to from the evening news–Glenn Reynolds writes that he can foresee “faked video of professional quality becoming a commonplace political item in the pretty near future”:

the evidence of recent weeks is that journalism is rife with fakery, and that we’re seeing more of it now mostly because it’s easier to spot now that lots of people can examine the evidence and compare notes.

* * *

Context is key. And one of the lessons of these various affairs is that neither the photo, nor the purveyor of the photo, should be given unquestioned authority. Instead, we have to think for ourselves, and make up our own minds. Because it turns out that we can’t trust, well, much of anyone.

You can hear me discuss these issues further with bloggers Charles Johnson and Dean Barnett on this TCS Daily podcast. And yes, that’s really us — not faked voices. Trust me.

Hey, if I could have afforded his royalties, I would have loved to have photoshopped in James Earl Jones’ voice for mine.

Update: In a related post, Betsy Newmark and Jeff Jacoby explore Photoshopped diversity in school textbooks: “when reality conflicts with political correctness, reality gets the boot“, Jacoby writes.

Ward Churchill–airbrushed or otherwise–could not be reached for comment.

Elsewhere, Q and O looks at the most pliable medium of all–text–as AP truncates the quotes from Donald Rumsfeld’s latest speech virtually to the point of Dowdification.