Photoshopgate - Mystery HaXXor doctors Kerry war protest photo
Friday, February 20, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
Doctored Kerry photo brings anger, threat of suit/Software, Net make it easy to warp reality
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
The photographer who snapped John Kerry attending a 1971 anti-war rally
says he and his photo agency intend to track down -- and possibly sue --
whoever doctored and circulated a photo that made it appear that the then
27-year-old Vietnam veteran was appearing alongside actress Jane Fonda.
Ken Light, now a UC Berkeley professor of journalism ethics, says he
photographed Kerry at an anti-war rally in Mineola, N.Y., on June 13,
1971. The decorated Vietnam veteran was preparing to give a speech at the
rally -- but Fonda was never at the event.
Light's photo gained prominence when someone took it and merged the shot
of the now Democratic presidential front-runner with another separate
photo of Fonda -- one taken by photographer Owen Franken as the actress
spoke to a 1972 rally in Miami Beach, Fla.
The fabricated Kerry-Fonda photo was circulated with an identifying logo
of the Associated Press and became the subject of talk show fodder after
it was placed on many Web sites as evidence of Kerry's "anti-American"
activities after his war service.
Light said this week that the use -- and misuse -- of his copyrighted
photo might result in legal action.
"(We're) doing everything possible to track down who it was and bring them
to justice," said Light, who said the Associated Press also intended to
examine the issue of who would use the agency's copyright for fraudulent
purposes.
A spokesman for Light's photo agency, Corbis, said its photographers' work
and copyrights are treated seriously.
The agency will "investigate this matter and take appropriate action as
necessary," the spokesman said.
Light, who teaches at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, said he
regularly instructed his students on matters of law and photo ethics. But
ironically, this year, "I've become the lesson," he said, referring to how
easy it has become to produce sophisticated and potentially damaging
photos via computer.
"With modern technology, anybody can do it," he said of the doctored photo
of Kerry, now a 60-year-old, four-term Massachusetts senator. "Someone has
to be really motivated and understand what they're doing."
Still, "it's one thing to (create) an image and another to try to make it
look like it came right from a newspaper," Light said. The addition of the
Associated Press logo suggested that whoever fabricated the photo was
"definitely more than someone having fun. ... People just see it, and it
creates this impression that it really happened."
Light said he was outraged by his almost 33-year-old photo's popping into
the news and becoming the subject of such Internet chatter.
"I was completely shocked and a little disappointed there would be this
type of fakery in a political campaign," he said.
"You become very concerned for democracy when you realize people are so
angry, they're desperately trying to find anything to tilt the direction
of what people are thinking," he said.
