MCLC: massive photoshop fail

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: massive photoshop fail
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Source: Foreign Policy Blog (10/29/13):
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/29/another_massive_photoshop_fa
il_in_china_0>

Another Massive Photoshop Fail in China
Posted By David Wertime

Now viral in China: A failed attempt at photo doctoring. On the evening of
Oct. 29, Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, lit up with mockery at an image
(above) posted <http://www.ngmzj.gov.cn/htmlpages/news.asp?id=1747> online
Oct. 12 by the government of Ningguo, a small city in China's central
Anhui province, purporting
<http://www.ngmzj.gov.cn/htmlpages/news.asp?id=1747> to show vice-mayor
Wang Hun pay a friendly visit to an elderly woman. There's only one
problem: The image, which appears to show Wang floating above a
particularly tiny woman, has clearly been modified.

That might not seem like much, but it's manna for Chinese netizens, who
feast on concrete examples of government dishonesty. In June 2011,
officials from Huili county in Sichuan province were also spotted
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/29/chinese-county-ridicule-docto
red-photograph> "floating" in a clearly doctored photograph that purported
to show them inspecting a local highway. Web users reacted with derision
and outrage, even though, as the Guardian wrote
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/29/chinese-county-ridicule-docto
red-photograph> in June 2011, the visits were real; a photographer had
decided one of the original images was "not suitably impressive."
Photoshopping is such a favorite target that the term "PS" has even become
a widely-recognized part of Chinese online slang.

It's unclear who first discovered the image on the Ningguo government's
website, which features a series of (otherwise seemingly real) images
depicting the city's vice-mayor joining a bevy of other local officials to
pay visits to women aged 100 years or older, in honor of the Double Ninth
Festival, a holiday that honors ancestors.

Now that netizens have found a new target, they seem unlikely to let go
any time soon -- regardless of the motive behind the modification. Not
only has the Weibo account of Communist Party-run newspaper People's Daily
joined <http://weibo.com/2803301701/AgiFtv783> in the derision, but some
web users have pointed out <http://weibo.com/u/1462578710> that Yu Anlin,
a local bureaucrat pictured standing (not floating) to Wang's right,
appears to be wearing, well, a watch. That too sounds innocent enough, but
Chinese officials have become leery of being spotted with timepieces, lest
online slueths discover them to be too expensive for an honest official to
afford. That revelation felled the career of another provincial bureaucrat
named Yang Dacai, an erstwhile safety official who was sentenced in
September to 14 years in prison on corruption changes.

Now, Wang and Yu are famous too, and for all the wrong reasons. The impact
of this snafu on their careers is uncertain, but they can be sure China's
social web will be watching them closely.