ABC News Illustrates Excellence
Whoa... a fauxtographic exposé from my favorite data mining expert? Awesome!
One can only imagine that the ABC News staffer that was responsible for picking a photograph to accompany a story about Pittsburgh's pollution was on a tight deadline, and picked the most polluted-looking of the pictures from their archives. Why did the editorial desk not catch this glaring error? I'll leave that up to reader speculation, because I know I probably wouldn't have caught it.
Great catch, Matthew! We'll make a "fauxtography" expert out of you, yet!
Update: Leave it up to the good folks of Stinky Journalism to get the problem solved, and fast! After a brief call to ABC, Rhonda Shearer managed to get them to completely replace the photo in the story.
Of course, the new photo they selected dates back to 2003, but hey, it's better than it was before! Here's the original caption, for your reference:
Great job, Rhonda!
This is off topic, but given that it is about news media and a little about science, I thought I'd squeeze it in. ABC News has an article today, authored by Ashley Phillips, about pollution in American cities. The article is fronted with an image of Pittsburgh (on top of the list of polluted places) in all its smoggy glory. However, the image includes the Three Rivers Stadium. This stadium was demolished early in 2001. So why post an out of date image with this story? Are the images of the other cities somehow incorrect as well? Perhaps the image is doctored to boot.
I'm guessing that 'news' sources of this type have a constant stream of such inaccuracies - more strength to the fifth estate and algorithmic news.
One can only imagine that the ABC News staffer that was responsible for picking a photograph to accompany a story about Pittsburgh's pollution was on a tight deadline, and picked the most polluted-looking of the pictures from their archives. Why did the editorial desk not catch this glaring error? I'll leave that up to reader speculation, because I know I probably wouldn't have caught it.
Great catch, Matthew! We'll make a "fauxtography" expert out of you, yet!
Update: Leave it up to the good folks of Stinky Journalism to get the problem solved, and fast! After a brief call to ABC, Rhonda Shearer managed to get them to completely replace the photo in the story.
Of course, the new photo they selected dates back to 2003, but hey, it's better than it was before! Here's the original caption, for your reference:
The skyline of Pittsburgh is seen through the morning haze from across the Allegeheny River Wednesday, July 2, 2003. While air pollution declined both statewide and nationally from 2000 to 2001, in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is, it increased by about 20 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Great job, Rhonda!
