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BP Admits It 'Photoshopped' Official Images as Oil Spill 'Cut and Paste' Row Escalates
BP has ordered staff to stop manipulating photographs of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, as the row over its public relations campaign intensifies.
The oil giant was forced to issue new guidelines to staff to "refrain from doing (sic) cutting-and-pasting" after several official company images were found to have been doctored.
The photo's caption on the BP site reads: 'View of the MC 252 site from the cockpit of a PHI S-92 helicopter 26 June 2010.' (Photo: BP)
BP admitted on Thursday that it "photoshopped" some of its official
images
that were posted on its website and vowed to stop the embarrassing
practice.
For the second time in two days, the company was identified to have doctored images posted on its official website that were supposed to show how it was responding to the oil crisis in America.
In the latest image, a photo taken inside a company helicopter appeared to show it flying off the coast near the damaged Bluewater Deepwater Horizon.
But it was later shown to be faked after internet bloggers identified several problems with the poorly produced image that contradicted the appearance that it was flying.
Among the problems identified included part of a control tower appearing in the top of the top right of the picture, different shades of colours, its pilot holding a pre-flight checklist and its control gauges showing the helicopter's door and ramp open and its parking brake engaged.
The image was posted on the official BP website but later removed.
It has since been posted to the company's official Flickr account under the heading "BP altered images, which also includes a further two faked pictures.
The image, entitled "View of the MC 252 site from the cockpit of a PHI S-92 helicopter 26 June 2010", was first identified by Gizmodo, a technology news website, which posted the images on Thursday after a tip-off from a reader.
Another image has also been exposed as faked, which BP admitted appeared to be "cut and pasted".
BP admitted the image of a meeting in its Houston office, showing a technical team in front of a large projection screen, had been "edited" using colouring tools. This was to ensure the detail on the projection screen could be seen to readers.
The disclosures have created further embarrassment for the oil giant and is the latest blunder to hit the company.
It comes less than a day after the oil giant was criticised for doctoring an image of image of its Gulf Coast oil spill command centre, which indicated that staff were busier than they actually were.
It later acknowledged that it posted on its website an altered photo that exaggerated the level of activity at the centre in Houston.
In a statement to The Daily Telegraph on Thursday, BP admitted that it edited images it posted on its official "Gulf of Mexico Response" website.
"BP's photographic department uses Photoshop to edit images we post on the bp.com Gulf of Mexico Response web site," a spokesman said.
"Typical purposes include colour correction, reducing glare and cropping. In a few cases, cut-and-paste was also used in the photo-editing process. These cut-and-pasted images have been removed.
"We've instructed our post-production team to refrain from doing (sic) cutting-and-pasting in the future."
He added that the both the original and edited images have been posted on its official Flickr page "for comparison".
He said the company included an image that "appears cut-and-pasted, but was edited using the colour saturation tool to improve the visibility of a projection screen image".
The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and causing one of America's worst environmental crises.
The well has spewed somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons into the Gulf. BP said the cost of dealing with the spill has now reached nearly $4 billion.
A US Senate panel has invited Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, to testify next week at a hearing on the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also is requesting testimony from Sir Mark Allen, who has served as an advisor to BP.
Mr Hayward and other oil bosses are expected to give evidence to a new UK political inquiry into offshore deep-water drilling.
That inquiry, expected to start later this year, will ask "serious questions" about the oil companies' plans for dealing with spills, including key safety devices such as blowout preventers.
46 Comments so far
Show AllThose B.P. Pig liars ! They will never pay for what they have done. It is obvious just in the fact they they are the criminals, of this crime, and are in charge of the crime scene ! That doesn't make sence on any crime show .So once again our Goverment has sold us out. What are we gonna do about it ? I am thinking Petitions, Court, something "We the People" should be able to sign, and get it heard in front of a Court, or Congress, somewhere. We need to state our grievences, and then get Council to present them. We must insist on turning our Country GREEN, we must stop killing all our land and water, a Nation that poisens it's own water is full of Dead people, and Cancer, for I don't know how long. Until we are all so weak we are conquered? I think we can all agree no matter which Party you lean towards, that we do not want to keep poisening our Land and Water. Oil and Natural Gas is going to be the death of us if we are not smarter ,soon real soon. We do not want Corporations dictating our lives anymore. They all need to be regulated, and all need to pay a fair Tax rate, and banks can not gamble our money, and reward themselves with huge obsene bonuses. None of the Corporations need reward themselves for failure, as they often do. I am not trying to write the Bill,I am just saying we need to stop fighting with each other, as I am sure the Goverment encourages,and get progressive if we want this Country to survive. They are willing to kill millions of us to get Rich ! They have proven that over and over again. How Stupid, for how long will we fight each other instead of our real enemy...remember the saying..."The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend" Republicans ,Democrats, Liberals, whatever you are we all have a common enemy... and that is our Goverment ! What are we gonna do about it ?
BP's Photoshopping of images was typical BP - half-assed. Altering photos happens all the time in politics. An easy way to check if a photo is doctored is to open the photo in photoshop and zoom in on the area in question, (like where the turban meets the hair line), and look for dissimilar pixel patterns and dissimilar pixel size. BP's doctored photos were really obvious on close inspection.
When done right you can not tell if a photo is doctored. A good example was the recent photo of the capuchin monkey in a military uniform wearing a helmet. On close inspection it looked real. It could have been doctored though if a black faceless dummy was dressed up and photographed then the monkey was photographed at the same time, with the same camera, in the same light, the same distance from the subject, etc., - and the the monkey face was moved over the black faceless dummy using Photoshop. (I don't think it is real though, it has been photoshopped, the giveaway is that the body is too big for the head in the picture. That body would be a capuchin on steroids. Capuchins have big heads in relation to their frame/body).
Lets keep in mind the big picture. What BP did was in no way wrong. They have a legitimate business interest in their corporate image. By hyping this whole non-story we are as bad as the right. Photographers access being limited to public shorelines and limiting aerial photography - that was wrong and that is the real story here. So let us get real and concentrate on the Obama Administration and BP restricting media access to this spill. It is no different than Bush not allowing media to show bodies coming home from Iraq. Concentrating on this BP doctoring story is disingenuous and makes us look like the loony left. Much to do about nothing.
I am retired from a marketing career consisting largely of photoshop fakery. Given that the public is now savvy about computer graphics programs there's just no excuse for getting it wrong. BP's problem seems not so much about the practice of doctoring photographs as the inability to hire capable talent for that purpose. Maybe we should apply for jobs.
Kenny-boy and the entire Obama Administration have been cut and pasted by BP and the rest of corporate America. The same with every administration before them.
If you visit the flickr site, you sill see that the alterations are minor, pretty dumb, and not that important. The helicopter was at the well site, but was sitting on a helideck of an adjoining rig, preparing for takeoff rather than airborne.
The control room pictures were doctored so there were no blank screens from remote underwater vehicles or overhead projectors, so that the impression of slightly more busy and attentive workers was conveyed.
It just gives some insights as to how modern PR people will so blithely alters reality.
But hey, I'm guilty of it too. On my facebook page - which I only opened so I could get news from a local anarcho-organizing group, I doctored a photo of me on a bridge structure angerily shaking a peace-sign-on-dark-blue-background flag (on March 20, 2003), into an image of me angerily shaking an anarcho-syndicalist flag. I am certainly a supporter of anarcho-syndicalism, so it is not really a misrepresentation of anything.
What is that....Anarcho ... you say you are ?
razormirror
I suspect that Anarcho is another word for anarchist.
Oh Shit...a real live Anti Christ right here on Common Dreams MMmmm..........
Oh Jeez! So I guess no one here at present has heard of the IWW (aka Wobblies), Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Utah Phillpps, the Catalonians, or what my nick refers to.
Go here and learn something:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Great source for anarcho-everything here:
http://www.infoshop.org/index.php?id=Home
There are many other sources that provide better information about the Wobblies than the two sites you mention. Start with Robert Wiebe's "The Search for Order" and Alan Dawley's "Struggle for Justice." Also there are several good sources on labor unions in the early 20th Century. They are much better sources than widipedia. Obviously you are not a fan of labor unions.
I was merely referring them to some primers from a recognized source. You're recommended books are fine, but I don't expect them to read books on labor history quite yet.
I am a voluntary dues-paying member of a labor union at work (although regrettaby not the IWW) and a supporter of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society, so of course I'm a fan of labor unions.
But "union" never quite described or describes the IWW,they are a league all their own.
Somehow I don't think your keeping the NSA up nights :)
>^^<
Of course not. Am I supposed to be trying to?
No thanks !
LOL!
>^^<
The control room was a 2001 picture doctored to look like a 2010 response to a catastrophe. This isn't just window dressing. It's a deception!
Thanks for pointing that out. That IS a serious deception,
That has to be the least thought out cloud of reasoning I've seen on Common Dreams.
"We have met the enemy, and it is us". The enemy is greed; getting every penny possible from every transaction. The culture in the West is such and includes virtually everyone. We want what we want when we want it, and it is now! The government is protecting as much of the corporate profit as possible. The lobbyists have insured that. Any cost overrun will be charged to the public. The public clambers for more, cheaper fuel and more fuel efficient vehicles so we can go farther for less when going less is the answer. Our cities have sprawled, and few want to use public transportation. This government, that government. This party, that party. What difference does it make? No matter how it is sliced, spun, dissected, analyzed, it is still We the People who are ultimately behind it. How many still patronize BP? How about Exxon, or Shell, or any other oil company; they are still bleeding the public, lobbying congress, drilling in unsafe waters. Their turn in the "barrel" is yet to come. Their personal spill is inevitable. Fully half this country is for MORE drilling in MORE places, and is against alternative energy exploration partly because it is too expensive. How many people in the Gulf, while being inundated in oil are protesting the moratorium imposed on deep water drilling? I believe the inmates are loose in the asylum, and many are actually running it. I don't know the answer, but I realize that I am part of the problem.
You are right, so am I, but there are alternatives, and we can demand them. We the People. I drive as little as possible, and I do not patronise any of the one's you named. However the system is set up for us to "have" to use these fuels. If we put Super Trains, like Japan, and Europe we could travel long distances better, we do need to make changes, but look how many we make everyday, T.V.'s, computers, community gardens, those use and trade cars, we can change if we want to. The oil companies, and Goverment have withheld the progress of clean Technology for years, to make huge personal profits, We all know this now, no more excuses ! If we throw our hands up in the air and give up, it is our children, and their children that will suffer, are we really that cruel of a people. I'm not, most of the people that I know are not. We will never convince everybody that we need to change ...there are still old people that think longing for the good ole days is what we need. The good ole days for millions of Americans was a very hard, and unfair time. We must move forward to new directions, places we have not been to yet.
I'd hurry up and get a 12 gal per minuite showerhead. then GO buy the biggest SUV the banksters will loan you for. and got out and enjoy America while it lasts.. what did they say 6 months.
If their wrong your no worse off than the rest of the US. But if not at least you won't spend the time left chewing your fingernails and weaping.
>^^<
You mean well, but you are also confusing many things: unfortunately, I don't have time to disentangle the mess.
Yeah why bother, what's the point of reading someones post, and then saying that...if you are to busy then ...??
Let me put it this way:
Person A, gets drunk. Takes a piss on the public street, and then passes out on a public bench.
Person B, gets drunk. Gets into a car and kills someone.
Would you sat that persons A and B are equally to blame? Equally guilty? No. Of course not. No sane person would believe that.
Does everyone benefit equally from BP? Tony Hayward for one, benefits from BP more than most people. Similarly does everyone benefit from Apple making Ipods in China with serf labour? Of course not.
Or look at your post below. Yes, Europe and Japan have good mass transit, relative to most parts of the US. But people still drive cars (more fuel efficient cars) in Europe and Japan.
So, to say that everyone is equally to blame is wrong. The everyone is equally to blame mantra is the kind of propaganda that BP and its apologists is trying to spread.
I did not write about any kind of equality on my post except that everyone plays a part; I did not write equal part. I am discouraged by the feedback that I received from my post. It appears that either it wasn't carefully read, or that it was too complicated. Earlier someone replied that they don't use any of the mentioned oil company products. I wrote that it was just a matter of time before every oil company that drills in the earth will experience an accident that will cause oil to spill and contaminate. It was Exxon 20 years ago, and now it is BP's turn. How many spills that while large and damaging, were not big enough to sell a product on the nightly news and therefore were not deemed worth reporting? And, to answer your earlier question: What is the focus, the amount pain and suffering caused, or weather person A and B got drunk? If it is did they get equally drunk, then it depends on their body mass and how much they drank in how much time. If it is how much damage, then obviously person B wins that award. In the same light, a vast majority in this country subscribes to a way of life that is detrimental to the health of this planet. But, that doesn't imply equality, it is by degree, like who drank the most, we're all at least riding in the car that is going to kill someone.
Thank you for understanding that I meant well. Sorry that I was confusing. I wish that you had time to point out my errors. That is how I learn; throught feedback and further investigation.
I won't allow you to blame the ruling elite's way of life on me and the rest of the middle and lower class.
If that is what you read, I wasn't being clear. That is not what I meant to say. Sorry that we did not communicate.
The House and the Senate have been photoshopped by the corporate tyranny, so why wouldn't it modify the photographs it leaks out to the public?
Corporate tyranny cannot be dissociated from constant deception of the public (weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq, terrorist cells lurking in every corner of the world, "they hate our freedons," "Iran has a nuclear weapons program," "the BP oil spill is tiny when compared to the size of the ocean," etc.).
Deception is necessary to conceal the tyranny's real aim (domination of the entire planet and of its resources), its devious and murderous practices (torture, arbitray and indefinite detention, concentration camps, undeclared and unlimited wars, spying on its own population, doctoring the news, etc.) and its political cynicism (supports Saudi Arabia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and other undemocratic regimes, yet claims to be a beacon of democracy and human rights).
"Corporate tyranny cannot be dissociated from constant deception of the public"
Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray! The time of "constant deception of the public" is rounding the corning, coming to the home stretch...and it's end. All hail human ingenuity and the Internet and wireless communication, as it begins to conquer the "last throes" of Cheney's embedded media gambit...All hail the end of humanity's executive decision making done...not for world domination...but by people who are behaving in the moment with bombastic infantile and adolescent behavior habits(the true bio-psyche power of fascism)...All hail the coming of a mature humanity! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!
(sure enough the race for worldwide human dignity may be entering the far turn instead of the near turn, but see the Sharrod incident for further proof there is a finish line to the constant deception...hip hip...)
...time for me to give CD some more $$$$$.....
I don't have any inside knowledge of this, but my instinct tells me that the people who were doing the very obvious cut and pasting were good folks trying to tell us that BP was faking this crap, and to help bring down a horribly evil company.
So if any of you are reading this, I say Thank You! for exposing how evil this company is. I suspect that if you had used your talents to your fullest, this story wouldn't have been discovered.
Now if only you could leave a tiny wireless camera inside the executives offices so we could hear the crazy crap they say, like "hahaha, they think the spill was an ACCIDENT!" etc, etc.
ahh....how much better things could be if people would wake up...
So, are the pictures of the containment cap of the oil leak photo shopped too?
thank you...
have they done anything suggesting integrity?
"Embarrassing practice"?
Can The Telegraph spell F R A U D ?
"A US Senate panel has invited Tony Hayward, the chief
executive of BP, to testify next week at a hearing on the
release of the Lockerbie bomber."
BP is flouting government directives, denying access to vital information, misleading, misdirecting and outright lying about the greatest disaster in history...which they caused!...and they (our elected representatives) are "inviting" this guy to talk about some cancer victim's early release?
I agree - ridiculous! Especially since there are rumors of a cover-up of the truth, a truth the US doesnt want to see revealed.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/lock-a24.shtml
You bet, Kitaj...especially since the guy was convicted by a fixed court on CIA manuractured (or bought) evidence (and the flimsiest), and the Scots probably couldn't get rid of him fast enough...an embarassment to their judicial system.
Look it up. It's interesting. The (not) official response to the verdict was widely shock and horror.
Kitaj...are you there?
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20243
Sounds like dick chainey and karl rove.
It isn't necessary to analyze photographs to understand what BP is doing. Their television ads show lots of scenes related to the spill, but none of dying animals, devastated marshland, or other disgusting circumstances resulting from their negligence. The overwhelming impression one would gain from their videos is that the spill is of modest proportions and is being cleaned up by efficient methods. No oil-covered workers; no boats covered in oil; no containment devices overrun by oil and rendered useless by waves; no protesting fishermen. It's some of the most clever propaganda I've seen. The photos don't have to be doctored. It's just a matter of selecting what you show to tell your false and misleading story.
Yes that is correct. Control and careful selection of distributed information is normally enough, and is much safer. Most disinformation relies on just that.
However, faked pictures and documents HAVE been used in the past. E.g:-
* Faked pictures of mobile Iraqi weapons labs
* Faked Niger uranium documents.
* Faked documents showing George Galloway being payed by Saddam Hussein.
* And not to forget - Faked videos of Osama bin Laden
Big Pricks.
oikos
'(supports Saudi Arabia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and other undemocratic regimes, yet claims to be a beacon of democracy and human rights).'
China has decided that it might be in the PEOPLE'S best interest to encourage Buddhism. There are 100 million Christians in China. Allowable. At this time. So long as a mob does not develop to disturb, harm, China from religous zealots of any stripe.
The Chinese are intensely patriotic. There are good reasons for this.
'Democracy is the worst form of government' Plato. There are good reasons for his saying this, too.
~
Must say, 'they' didn't do a good job with pics of 9/11. We saw every detail and listened to the workmen on the spot 'never seen anything like this... the steel melted, ran like a river'.. and so on...
Buildings falling into their own footprint.. no fighter jets available.... and so much more.... Nope, they didn't get to do a good job with the pics of 9/11. We saw it all, just as it occurred.
~