Seattle’s so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a bizarre, free-form experiment in modern secession, is a disaster.
That makes it all the more bizarre that Fox News published digitally manipulated and misleading photos this weekend, giving the impression that the CHAZ is more violent than it really is. The situation in Seattle is chaotic and explosive enough without exaggeration!
“As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone,” the Seattle Times reported on Friday, “Fox’s website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.”
As it turns out, the featured photo is a composite of two separate images.
“The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle,” reported the Seattle Times, which was first news media outlet to flag the manipulated images.
“Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring ‘You are now entering Free Cap Hill,'” the report adds.
Seattle freelance photographer David Ryder took the photo of the unidentified gunman on Wednesday.
“It is definitely Photoshopped,” Ryder said of the doctored images that appeared on Fox’s website. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”
This is slightly reminiscent of the incident involving ABC News running footage from a nighttime machine gun demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky, and claiming it showed a frontline battle between the Syrian Kurds and the invading Turks. But at least in Fox’s case, the images are from Seattle.
lmao Fox News is photoshopping an armed guard into pictures about the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone to make it look more dangerous than it is
(h/t @sumromanus!) pic.twitter.com/WtxE8k18KB— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) June 12, 2020
Well, most of the images anyway. One of the misleading photos promoted by Fox was taken in a different city altogether. The network’s homepage for a time also sported the headline “CRAZY TOWN” and a series of stories about the CHAZ, including one headline, “Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ ‘autonomous zone,’ shake down businesses: cops.” The homepage featured a photo of a man running past a burning store and a burning car. The problem here is that the featured image was taken on May 30 — in Minneapolis.
They also used a fiery photo from Minnesota as the centerpiece on a package of stories about Seattle. https://t.co/RBF0ttg2ku pic.twitter.com/bElH94RgYW
— Gina Cole (@Gina_Cole_) June 12, 2020
Fox has since removed the misleading photos. The news network also affixed an editor’s note to the stories that featured the since-deleted pictures.
“A FoxNews.com home page photo collage which originally accompanied this story included multiple scenes from Seattle’s ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’ and of wreckage following recent riots,” the note reads. “The collage did not clearly delineate between these images, and has since been replaced. In addition, a recent slideshow depicting scenes from Seattle mistakenly included a picture from St. Paul, Minnesota. Fox News regrets these errors.”
But how did these images make it to print without any sort of warning or clarification for readers flagging dates, locations, and digital alterations? Who made the doctored photos featuring the unidentified gunman? How did those altered photos make it onto Fox’s homepage?
Spokespersons for the network declined to respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
The thing that is so incomprehensible about this Fox News incident is that the CHAZ is already a lawless hot spot, replete with armed gunmen and power struggles. There was never any need for manipulation or exaggeration.
