EGYPTIAN NEWSPAPER CONTROVERSY

EGYPT – One Egyptian newspaper’s fun with photoshop has gotten it into some hot water!
The saying is as true today as it ever was – “Think before you act.” Well it seems as though one Egyptian newspaper never got that memo and now it ended up hurting them. The newspaper thought that using photoshop to play around with a picture including top world leaders was a good idea … Wrong!
Al-Ahram, the state-run newspaper in Egypt, recently ran the photo – found below – of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak leading President Obama and other world leaders during Middle East peace talks at the White House. The problem with the photo is that it’s altered and the real one can be found above. Kudos for trying to instill some national pride. No kudos for doing it with a picture in which your president isn’t even in his own country. Also, no kudos for doing such a miserable job with photoshop. You would think that a state-run newspaper would have better photoshop wizards … guess not.

Egyptian media has long faced government censorship, so it’s not surprising the state-run newspaper would opt to place Mubarek ahead of the pack. News of the photoshopped image drew a swift rebuke from one of Egypt’s leading opposition groups, the April 6 Youth Movement. “This is what the corrupt regime’s media has been reduced to,” a statement on the group’s website said. The state-owned press had “crossed the line from being balanced and honest,” the statement continued. But the specific reason for doctoring the photo is unclear, since Al-Ahram did not respond to requests for comments from the BBC.
The photo includes President Obama, President Mubarek, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan.