USA Today manipuló foto
El miércoles 19 la versión online del diario USA Today publicó la historia “Rice won’t rule out U.S. troops in Iraq in 10 years” 
con la siguiente foto:
Una semana después, la periodista Michelle Malkin denunció desde su blog que esa foto fue manipulada. Bajo el título “DEMONIZING CONDI” , Malkin escribió: “Check out the photo of Condoleezza Rice that was published by USA Today last week. Notice anything peculiar about her eyes? No, Condi isn’t possessed; the photo was manipulated.”
La noticia fue publicada en la mañana del miércoles 26 y en la tarde de ese mismo día el USA Today reconoció el hecho y cambió la foto por la original:
En la página del artículo el editor hizo sus descargos:
The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY’s editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice’s face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.
La manipulación se pudo comprobar porque Yahoo! News suele publicar las fotos originales de la agencia de noticias AP.
Steve Anderson, vocero de USA Today, no identifió al editor online que manipuló la foto y dijo a la publicación Editor and Publisher que “it’s considered an honest mistake and the person was not disciplined”.
Explicó que “the move was made after inquiries ‘in the hundreds’ came in about the alteration, while numerous blogs also began posting comments about the situation”.
El editor considera que es un “error honesto” y que los ojos quedaron así al ajustar el contraste y el brillo de la foto. Pero personas con experiencia en el Photoshop dejaron sus comentarios en el blog de Malkin:
This is definitely not an unsharpen filter, because only the eyes have been altered. And even so, if you isolated the eye areas with a mask and ran that filter you still wouldn’t get the result shown in the USA Today image.
Any filter in Photoshop would apply to the whole image. The absurd sharpening would bring out her necklines, the stripes in her shirt, her lips, her nostrils, her earrings, etc. So the image was deliberately manipulated around the eyes. Notice how the pupils have been narrowed, like a cat’s eyes. Sharpening would not alter the roundness of her pupils, only accentuate them. Another paint or erase tool is required to achieve that effect. Someone did this deliberately.
