The CBC decides to add some dramatic effect to a story about global warming by changing the coloration this picture of the Toronto skyline. And they didn't even bother to change the file name from the original. Oh, and those smokestacks? Torn down in 2006.

Oh what a difference photoshop can make!

Kate has the entire story and the original photos. I cropped the ones above to show how the CBC did it, but not perfectly.

Here are the two photos overlaid over one another and with the opacity of the overlaid image reduced to 50%. Except for the bad cropping job I did, they're an exact match.

And remember this is the CBC--the government run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Perhaps not as bad as the Reuters fauxtography scandal, but it certainly doesn't seem ethical. Check out the rest.

UPDATE: To clarify, this seems like an attempt to make the air look more polluted than it actually is and to somehow link that pollution to global warming. Color changing, per se, is not considered 'out of bounds' for journalists, but only minor tweeking and for enhancement reasons.

The color in this photos seems to have been 'enhanced' in such a way as to mislead the reader into thinking that this is the actual color of ths skyline in Toronto. That color, by the way, is what you'd expect to find in ozone (smog) or particulate laden cities, like my own home town of Los Angeles. And low level ozone and particulates are not greenhouse gasses. The opposite, actually.

UPDATE II: Just to show the difference of what "coloration" can do to a photo, here is a pic of the same Toronto skyline without enhancments taken by reader Pete. I had to reduce the image size which kills some of the clarity, but hopefully you get the picture.

By the way, the vast majority of visible "smoke" that people see coming out of smokestacks isn't smoke at all--it's steam.

Posted by: Rusty at 09:49 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 Maybe I'm having another slow morning, but I don't get it.  They left out some smokestacks and added a color filter.  So?  Color filters don't qualify as photoshopping in my book.

Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 20, 2007 11:25 AM (8e/V4)

2 On the other hand if they filtered it brown for the express purpose of making it look more polluted then that is pretty low.  But nothing I don't expect from the MSM everyday.

Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 20, 2007 11:37 AM (8e/V4)

3 Color correction is a normal process in photography, (including photojournalism) and not in and of itself indiciative of conspiracy or ill intent. Photo manipulation/enhancement did not start with digital photography; in the darkroom , it was done with dodging and burning; in the camera it was done by "pushing" the exposure, adjusting depth of field and more.

Same goes for cropping. Most of us have seen vey few photographs in print that have not been cropped in some way, for a multitude of reasons.

The question then boils down to whether or not the sepia toned print was manipulated to seem "dirtier" than the blue toned one, and if that was done with the intent of shaping public perception of a hot-button issue.

And because most prophecies here seem to be of the self-fulfilling variety, I assume the answer will be , "Of course it was; more proof of Lefturd control of the media."

Posted by: B at April 20, 2007 11:38 AM (Zlbra)

4

Actually if any of you hayseeds had ever visited Toronto in August,
you'd know that this is pretty much how it looks on a smoggy day. So
does Vancouver for that matter.

Good reasoning though...

CBC ads some yellow to photograph depicting Toronto smog.

Therefore there is no such thing as global warming.

Genius.

Posted by: John at April 20, 2007 04:35 PM (qiTAx)

5 In fairness, Toronto does have a lot of brown sky days.

As for the previous comment: There is no - or next to no - man-made global warming because there is no - or next to no - man-made global warming. The fact the CBC employs alarmist, manipulative twats would be true whether or not the sky was falling.

Posted by: Flea at April 20, 2007 07:13 PM (BuDDb)

6 You know... the kind of people who say there's no global warming, were the same sort of people who probably argued that there was nothing wrong with shitting where you eat.

"Whaddya mean there are tiny little creatures who make us sick?! That's the work of devils!

Posted by: John at April 20, 2007 08:52 PM (S3Rzh)

7 Here is another pic of the Toronto skyline. As you can see there is not a cloud in the sky

Posted by: Darth Odie at April 20, 2007 09:04 PM (YHZAl)

8 Umm, actually, John, the difference is that eventually after a lot of years, scientists were able to see the nasty litttle critters, thus proving that you shouldn't shit where you eat. People who can think for themselves - including a whole hell of a scientists are still looking for/waiting for proof that there is such a thing as man-made global warming.

Posted by: emdfl at April 21, 2007 07:53 AM (nzohN)

9 CBC just like the rest of the left-wing liberal news media prefer to exaerate it all GLOBAL WARMING is fruad and lie

Posted by: sandpiper at April 21, 2007 09:44 AM (9NBAS)

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