So a friend sent me this NY Times article on Christian Fight Teams

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/02fight.html

And since nobody seems to have noticed I'll say it: The first rule of reporting on the Jesus Fight Club is: Don't screw up the Photoshop job in the headline image. It just makes us all look stupid.

My reply to the article:

Ummm...what everybody seems to have missed (as far as I can tell without poring over every response) is the botched Photoshop job on the guy's torso. Hey, New York Times: Agenda much? I mean WTF? Were you trying to make him swarthy to round out your token dark guy count? Or did your editor honestly think making him darker was going to "improve the composition?

Seriously...You make every ethical artist and photographer look like shit when you do this kind of thing. STOP IT! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

With the photo in question:

who think Photoshopping the images in a factual article is a good idea? Seriously?

It looks like the shadow of the shaved-head guy in the left. I can see his ear, neck, and shirt collar, etc.

It's been photoshopped. And badly. If it were less obvious, I think I wouldn't have as much problem with it. But it's glaring. Obvious. Amateurish......

It may not have an agenda, but it points to the kind of tinkering that people here squeal about on a daily basis.

it is also so badly photo-shopped to lighten the fighter that they pushed it into the realm of ridiculous and fake looking. I would normally give the person a pass for pushing up the exposure because of the difficulties in shooting a good exposure under the circumstances to someone went way over board in compensating. Then whoever went a bit heavy with the sharpening.

do it in Jesus name.

look at the edges around the pasty white chest moving onto the swarthy dark belly, far too round to be a torn mesh shirt. The asshole "xtian" fighter is lifting up his shirt with his left hand exposing the skin underneath which is the normal pasty white of his face and someone decided to give him a kickass black dude sixpack. Probably forgot to color the sixpack to pasty white.

I don't think the image manipulation has much to do with race except in that bad-things-are-dark sort of way.