Factcheck: Did BBC photoshop a picture of Jemery Corbyn to have him look like a Russian stooge?

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BBC’s current affairs show Newsnight  March 2018 showed  a modified photo of Labour leader Jerermy Corbyn  against a red Kremlin skyline in the background.

Corbyn asked critical questions in the British parliament about making Russia suspect of the murder on former spy Skripal while there is no hard evidence. He stressed that any response to Russia must be based on clear evidence.

Many people were angry at the BBC because BBC made Corbyn look like someone who cooperates with Russia. People believed BBC  had photoshopped a photo of Corbyn to make the Labour leader appear ‘more Russian’.

Dail Mail at March 19 published an overview of the fuss about the altered photo.

Owen Jones,  columnist  for The Guardian,  started the row during his appearance in BBC Newsnight the next day.

One of the other people being loud with critic is former First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond who hosts a political tv  program, ‘The Alex SalmondShow’, hosted on Kremlin financed  RT (former Russia Today).

BBC responded on Twitter saying they used a stck photo and it was not manipulated in any way.

It also stated The Corbyn Moscow background is a standard background used by Newsnight. They used it a couple of months ago. The image below is the proof. It shows Gavin Williamson.

 

Jess Brammar, acting editor for BBC Newsnight, also responded on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/jessbrammar/status/975038849121443840

 

There are some differences with the Jeremy Corbyn photo.

First of all, his face has been placed next to the Kremlin, while Gavin Williamson was placed on the righthand side of the background.

Also the hat has been modified to resemble a more Russian hat. Also the colour of the face has been “posterized” (duo tone) to match the colour palette of the background.

Someone stated the shape of the Breton hat was changed. The hat seems bigger on screen than on the original photo.

https://twitter.com/morelikewater/status/975061521138151424

Someone explains it here. The reason is perspective distortion.

For the viewer the face of Corbyn in now integrated into red and close to the Kremlin.

When using Google Image Search, only a very few number of photos are shown of Corbyn wearing him a Breton hat. The majority of the photos show him wearing a suit.

Jolyon Maugham is a barrister and director of the Good Law Project and Queen’s Counsel ( an eminent lawyer). At March 18 he sent this Tweet

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/975335522150297600

Followed by Tweets stating: “The message was communicated to me in confidence so I will give *no* further details. But I would swear a witness statement that this tweet is true. Lots of people doubt this is true. That’s fair enough given how little detail I feel able to provide. But I’m hardly a Corbyn fan. And it’s a very big deal for a QC deliberately to tell a lie.”

At March 19, Jolyon Maugham wrote a blogpost with more details on his communication with a BBC senior.  He provides a five-pointed list explaining the evidence he holds and what he is legally allowed to say. This is point 5.

5. Can I say anything more about the substance of the conversation? X talked explicitly and unambiguously about how criticisms of Corbyn that the BBC could not voice were deliberately coded into imagery. X did not say that this was a general policy of the BBC or that there was some institutional directive to ‘smear’ Jeremy Corbyn. X clearly understood that X’s comments were sensitive for the BBC

September 2016, a parody on Corbyn showing him as a character in a Harry Potter movie

The September 2, 2016 episode of Newsnight ended showing Corbyn in a Harry Potter movie. At least BBC mentioned parody in the text underneath the Youtube video.  This was a BBC response to Tweet by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. She was attacking Jeremy Corbyn. Rowling, a longtime Labour supporter, is furious with Corbyn’s leadership.

September 2016, BBC shows a photomontage of Corbyn as Don Corleone

In the September 26, 2016 episode of BBC Newsnight the program showed a photomontage of Corbyn as Don Corleone. Corleone is a charter is a novel and the movie the Godfather who builds an American Mafia empire.

 

January 10, 2017, another BBC Newsnight photoshop

At the January 10, 2017 edition of BBC Newsnight the background of the program showed Jeremy Corbyn wearing a red baseball cap with text “Make Britain great again”. The cap is exactly the same (colour, size , shape) as the baseball cap which Donald Trump wears with the text  ” Make America great again”.

However, Jeremy Corbyn never wore a cap like shown by BBC Newsnight!

The screenshots below show BBC Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark. These are no photoshops. A part of the episode can be watched on Youtube. I found it very remarkable I could hardly find any reference to this photoshop on internet. Just a couple of blogs mention this.

BBC confirms having added a baseball cap on the photo of Corbyn, but call it a “photomontage”

One of the viewers of BBC Newsnight episode at January 10, 2017 sent a letter of complaint to the BBC. The name of the person is known to me. Out of privacy I will not mention the name of the person. This person had severall email conversations with people working for BBC handling complaints.

The letter below was sent by Andrew Bell, complaints director at BBC. The letter is very interesting for three reasons:

  1. BBC states that it did a “photomontage” and believes “a photomontage is an established technique in journalism to make a point visually and succintly”   (in a brief and clearly expressed manner).
  2. Jeremy Corbyn has to the knowledge of BBC not ever worn a cap like that in the photograph.
  3. BBC states it was for BBC Newsnight audiance would recognise the image for the montage that it was.

Andrew Well later in an email wrote:

Photomontage, by its nature, frequently involves alteration of the content of a photograph. The Wikipedia definition is typical of most: “Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that a final image may appear as a seamless photographic print”.
 
Secondly, I’m still of the view that the programme was entitled to assume that its audience was likely to recognise this as a photographic device and not be misled into believing that Jeremy Corbyn had at some point donned such a hat.

Newsnight did a photomontage of Theresa May

The Newsnight broadcast on 24 February 2017 started with a photomontage of Theresa May pictured as a Roman empress.

 

Conclusion

Visuals are more powerful than the words being spoken. BBC understands that. The Corbyn image pasted over the Kremlin backdrop is hardly an innocent choice.

BBC in January 2017 did a photoshop of an photo of Jeremy Corbyn by adding a red baseball cap he never wore.

BBC admitted in a response to a viewers complaint that it did a photomontage of a picture of Corbyn, but assumed the audience would understand it was a photomontage.

A BBC senior stated to a barrister that ‘ BBC  criticisms of Corbyn that the BBC could not voice were deliberately coded into imagery’.

While it cannot be proven BBC for the second time deliberately decided to photoshop a photo, and select a photo wearing a Breton hat, it is at least against all professional journalist code of ethics to alter an image in the way BBC did.

Channel 4 did a similar factcheck here.

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