Fake Kate

The Royal Family recently released a photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her three children. She had not been seen for a while after having abdominal surgery last January, so the royal subjects were kinda excited about it. The photo was released in honor of Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom (which is on March 27 while ours is on May 12. I look shit up, yo). As it turns out, the photo was heavily doctored.

Kate Middleton, the Princess, had doctored the photo herself. The manipulations were easy to catch, even by amateur photographers.

Within hours,  major news outlets such as Getty Images, Agence France-Presse, and the Associated Press asked their clients, newspapers, to stop using the image out of concern it had been altered in violation of their ethical standards. 

Ethics are an actual thing in this industry even if a lot of cartoonists don’t agree. I’m talking about the fuckers who trace, the fuckers who base their cartoons on lies and conspiracy theories, the cowardly fucker who’s working anonymously, and the ethically-deprived fucker who’s selling the anonymously-drawn cartoons. One of the last remaining employed political cartoonists recently told me that ethics are “imaginary guidelines.”

There are concerns within the industry that journalistic transparency and integrity are increasingly under assault as artificial intelligence and accusations of “fake news” besiege our culture.

The AP explained its “photo kill” order, saying its rules prohibit altered or digitally manipulated images beyond minor photo editing, such as cropping or color adjusting, but nothing that would alter the original scene of the photo.

The AP said, “Changes in density, contrast, color, and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning.” The AP doesn’t even allow the removal of red eye.

Reuters said its “Handbook of Journalism” only allows for limited use of Photoshop, saying, “We use only a tiny part of its potential capability to format our pictures, crop and size them and balance the tone and color.” What they’re doing there is what we used to do in dark rooms before we got fancy stuff like pagination and Photoshop.

Note: I am a former photojournalist and darkroom technician.

Journalistic ethics demand that images are not manipulated during postproduction (after the photo is taken) with Photoshop or other editing software. Editors also must ensure the veracity of photos that were taken in uncertain circumstances, such as war zones. In 2017, a photographer using a fake name was busted for stealing photos and passing them off as his own to news outlets after manipulating them. “His” photos were featured in publications like The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and Vice for years before he was caught.

Recently, a political cartoonist was caught tracing and plagiarizing ideas and his syndicate forced him to remove all stolen content from his Facebook page while they removed the same stuff from their website. However, they didn’t fire him and allowed him a second chance despite the decades-plus of him being a fraudster.

Trust is a big factor in this, like trusting a photographer when he or she says a photo is what they claim and that he or she is the person who took the photo. It’s the same with political cartoonists as editors rarely, if ever, examine a cartoon to see if it was traced or stolen.

We should be wary of Artificial Intelligence because now it’s being used not just to manipulate photos, but to manipulate us.

The BBC recently discovered deepfakes of Donald Trump surrounded by Black supporters. There are dozens of these AI-generated images, though none have been linked to his campaign. Some of these are difficult to catch while others are easier because most people don’t have three arms. One has been linked to a conservative radio show in Florida.

Mark Kaye and his team created an image of Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where he has over one million followers. Kaye posted the photo with an article about Black voters supporting Trump, giving the impression the photo was real.

Kaye said, “I’m not a photojournalist. I’m not out there taking pictures of what’s really happening. I’m a storyteller.” He’s a teller of stories alright. But the thing is, he’s a part of the media. He has a radio show that probably has millions of stupid and ignorant followers. He has a responsibility to be honest and not make shit up. Journalistic ethics should apply to him. His station should fine and suspend him for this or better yet, fire his lying ass.

Have you ever noticed that MAGAts can never promote Donald Trump without lying? Take a guy who calls himself Shaggy (probably not the guy who sang Wasn’t Me or the other guy who was Scooby’s buddy) for example.

Shaggy posted a photo that was originally from a satirical account on social media, but he shared it with the claim that Trump stopped his motorcade to pose with Black people he saw sitting on a porch. MAGAts saw this photo and thought, “What a nice guy. He’s just tooling down the road trying to get someplace because he’s so busy and important but then, saw some Black people sitting on a porch and screamed at his chauffeur, ‘Stop the car! There are Black people I must be a real person with!’ That Trump is so real and genuine. For a guy who shits in a gold toilet, he truly is one of us.”

Shaggy told the BBC after they tracked him down, that his posts “have attracted thousands of wonderful kind-hearted Christian followers.” You know, people who like confirmation bias and only want to see what they want to believe. After a reporter from the BBC asked him a question about using an AI-generated image, he blocked the reporter from contacting him again. That does seem like the Christian thing to do. It’s what Jesus would do, block the BBC.

What the Princess did was probably intended without malice. She was probably only trying to showcase her family in the best light possible. It’s a good thing my mom never got Photoshop. Princess Catherine owned it. What MAGAts are doing for Trump is to manipulate and lie. How many times in the past have you seen a photo from a football game or a rock concert that a MAGAt was claiming was from a Trump rally?

Over the next eight months, the bastards are going to be bombarding us with deep fakes and other tricks to win an election they don’t deserve to win. If you don’t think ethics and integrity are important, you’re wrong. At no time in history have ethics and integrity been more important.

Music note: I listened to Flower Head.

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