Monday, September 15, 2008
Jill Greenberg's fraudtography
Regular blog readers already know that Jill Greenberg, a lefty photography hired by the Atlantic to shoot a cover photo of John McCain, used her appointment with him to take a bunch of pictures with unflattering light, manipulated them, posted them on her website, and bragged about it. In effect, she abused her access to McCain, put the Atlantic in the position of having unwittingly misrepresented the purpose of the session, and bragged about it. Now the magazine that hosts Andrew Sullivan's virulently anti-McCain screeds is refusing to pay Greenberg and contemplating a lawsuit.
I draw several conclusions from this.
First, Ms. Greenberg must have thought that her audience, at least, would respond favorably to this shameful fraud in the service of advancing Barack Obama's candidacy.
Second, it never crossed her mind that her career might suffer from admitting this fraud. She apparently overestimated the extent to which a reputable 'zine like the Atlantic is willing to be humiliated.
Third, the Atlantic is more principled than any of us who have been reading Sullivan might have expected it to be. The difference is the fraud. No business can tolerate that, or it will be picked down to the bone. Duh.
Fourth, bragging never pays. If you are going to pull off a dirty trick, you need to let some other fool take the credit.
10 Comments:
By 
Escort81, at
Mon Sep 15, 04:38:00 PM:
The sad thing is that she may gain business on a net basis. If you take the size of Olbermann's audience as a starting point, there are hundreds of thousands of people who would admire her BDS/McDS/PDS and her trickery. I would guess that at least dozens of people in that group are in a position to throw her some business.
I am not sure what the basis of a civil suit against her would be -- some sort of fraud claim? She would just retort, "hey, my website is up and I didn't hide anything from anybody, where is the fraud or attempt to deceive -- of course I was going to try to make McCain look bad!"
By 
, at
Mon Sep 15, 05:08:00 PM:
The really sad thing is that while the AM has the decency to apologize, Fox News still hasn't apologized for its whorish photo doctoring.
By , at
Mon Sep 15, 05:52:00 PM:
She's still got one up, as the splash screen at manipulator.com
Honestly, it's like these freaks want their boy to lose (works for me).
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Sep 15, 05:57:00 PM:
Which "whorish photo doctoring"? I missed that news at my end of the echo-chamber.
By Shannon, at
Mon Sep 15, 06:40:00 PM:
@Escort81
I would guess that the basis of a lawsuit would likely be breach of contract. In arrangements such as these, it is typical that the company who paid for the photoshoot (in this case The Atlantic) owns the rights to their distribution for some period of time.
I think her comments in regard to the controversy are quite telling. Greenberg said "Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for [The Atlantic] to hire me." So expecting professionalism from a "professional" was irresponsible?
By Larry Sheldon, at
Mon Sep 15, 08:17:00 PM:
"crossed her mind"
Crossed her what?
By , at
Mon Sep 15, 08:26:00 PM:
For years Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly were the leading- the only?- monthly liberal middlebrow magazines. I stopped reading Harper's on a regular basis, well before I turned conservative, because of a snarky tone that crept into its articles. IIRC, that occurred after its direction was assumed by the Harper's Foundation.
By contrast,the Atlantic Monthly did not go off the deep end the way Harper's did. In fact, I was recently a subscriber.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Sep 15, 09:44:00 PM:
Boludo, I agree. I used to subscribe to both, but can no longer abide Harper's. I still get the Atlantic.
By , at
Mon Sep 15, 09:48:00 PM:
I, too, used to subscribe to Harper's. I used to think the writing was great but now find the writing and overall tone of the magazine insufferable.
By , at
Tue Sep 16, 01:26:00 PM:
Not too many years ago Atlantic Monthly published such outstanding conservative writers as P.J. O'Rourke and Mark Steyn, and yes some writers from the other side of the political spectrum.
Of late their journalistic standards have slipped away (along with my subscription) but it is good to know that a bit of integrity remains.
By the way, I am new around here, keep up the good work (and maybe kill some of the comment spam).
