Gainesville Sun Uses Photoshop to Rig City Election Against Candidate, Nathan Skop

The Gainesville Sun loses more credibility in their attempt to rig a City Commission election

Gainesville Sun reporter, Chad Smith filed a story where photoshop was used to hide the identity of a sitting Gainesville City Commissioer who was behind the attempted smear of an opposing candidate, Nathan Skop, in Tuesday’s runoff election.

It is now revealed that Commissioner Thomas Hawkins was behind the Sun’s attack story that attempted to falsely discredit a campaign card that was legally mailed to city voters by Nathan Skop, a candidate for City Commission in Tuesday’s runoff election. (2/28/2012)

A screen-shot of the on-line article below shows that an image editor, like Photoshop, was used to “erase” or “redact” Thomas Hawkins’ identity from the address field on the camaign card.

Importantly, notice that the SUN’s claim that the image is the “submitted photo” when, in fact, the image shown is the doctored, post-photoshop photo.

Even though Hawkins was the instigator of the political hit-piece, Chad Smith’s article makes no mention that a City Commissioner – actively supporting Skop’s opponet – was seminally involved in seeing that the SUN published the sleeze.

Journalistic deceit by the Gainesville Sun was revealed when Chad Smith forwarded the original photo to Nathan Skop’s campaign manager where the address field revealed that Commissioner Hawkins’ name had been unethically removed. This can be viewed as an obvious tactic to protect commissioner Hawkins from being revealed as unethically “electioneering” for Skop’s opponent.

The pre-photoshop image exposes commissioner Hawkins as a surrogate operative and activist for the increasingly sleezy campaign for City Commission waged by Lauren Poe.

The image below shows the address field insert where “Hawkins Family” appears before it was redacted by the Sun.

The image below displays both sides of a Nathan Skop’s campaign mailer where no real legal violation has yet been alleged by the SUN, Thomas Hawkins or Skop’s runoff opponent, Lauren Poe who was previously voted out of office in a previous re-election attempt. 

The Sun’s article can only be regarded as an attempt to discredit candidate, Nathan Skop by using the influence of a corrupt City commission in league with The Gainesville Sun in a hit-piece in order to discredit Nathan Skop -  a candidate who is dedicated to stopping record electric rate increases due to a $3 to $ 4 billion dollar GRU-GREC Biomass Plant boondoggle that will never belong to the people that it will impoverish.

Journalistic standards are clear that altering images violates ethics:

Sacramento Bee fires Bryan Patrick for photo manipulation

“The Bee’s ethics policy and style guide prohibit such alteration, saying, “To maintain the credibility of The Sacramento Bee, documentary photographs will not be manipulated in any way that alters the reality of the image.”

Photojournalistic standards prohibit Image Altering

Chapter Six Picture Manipulations by  Paul Martin Lester

Photojournalism An Ethical Approach

“Photojournalism has a long and cherished tradition of truthfulness. The impact of the visual image on a viewer comes directly from the belief that the “camera never lies.” As a machine, the camera faithfully and unemotionally records a moment in time. But a machine is only as truthful as the hands that guide it. John Szarkowski (1980), director of photography for the Museum of Modem Art in New York, explained that when truthfulness and visual impact are combined in a powerful picture, such an image can shock the public. But that public trust, however, can also be manipulated.”

This story was originally posted on ALACHUAPOLITIX.COM