FanPost

Photoshopping olemisssports.com

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This photograph and headline "Rebels Down No. 5 South Carolina 5-4" appeared on the Ole Miss website on April 18 following the Rebels’ Sunday victory.  The problem is that Ole Miss was wearing gray yesterday. 

Remember when Cokie Roberts got busted for posing in the studio before a photo of the U.S. Capitol during a live news broadcast after Peter Jennings cut away to her saying "Now we will go to Cokie Roberts at Capitol Hill"? No, you don't remember? Oh, well, trust me - it's the same kind of shoddy journalism.

This is not an isolated occurrence of photoshopping at olemisssports.com – the school’s official website frequently pairs an old picture of a different game from its photo files to illustrate its [deleted] stories. I looked back at several of the photos accompanying post-game stories on olemisssports.com and was surprised to find at least eight such mismatches (and I only went back as far as the USM game on March 23) in which the team was actually wearing  different colored jerseys than what is depicted on the website as a purported game photo.  And these were just the ones that I could verify. Talk about lazy – they don’t even bother to dig out an old photo of the right colored jersey.  

I especially liked the website's illustration for "the USM game"

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If you were there, you might remember that we were the visitors and wore gray that night. The headline read "Miller leads Rebels To 11-6 Win Over Southern Miss," so at least credit the guys with finding an old shot of Zach Miller. Can you make out the redbird on the USM catcher's jersey? Look a little closer...

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When did Southern become the Cardinals?? 

And the following photo accompanied olemisssports.com's headline, "Pomeranz Fans 15 In 4-1 Win At Georgia"  on April 9:

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Not only is that not Pomeranz (it’s Mort), but Pom and the rest of the team were wearing red that night.  So now you know what I do when our baseball team is on the skids. All I can say is Thank God for the honest journalism of RCR!

P.S.  4UmRebs made a half-valid point in her comment below:  all of my examples above are from away games [true] and it is unreasonable to expect student photographers to travel to away games, snap photos of the event & upload them within an hour. That's true, too, but I do not expect student photographers to do any of that. I expect the editors to adhere to the most fundamental journalistic precept and not print deliberately misleading material. 

I chose the examples above because they illustrated other points (or because I liked them; or because those were the only photos I had immediately at hand), but my selection apparently left the mistaken impression that the corner-cutting at olemisssports.com only occurs when the Rebels are on the road. Not so. Here are the photos accompanying their stories on two recent home games:

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Saturday, April 3, vs. Tennessee, O-U Stadium. The Rebels wore blue.

 

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Saturday, March 27, vs Florida, O-U Stadium. The Rebels wore blue

So there.  But 4UmRebs got to me in another way. I might have been too hard on "student journalists" - if that is who writes the content on the site. I've deleted my description of their stories as being "poorly written." That was an unwarranted swipe. Generally the "reporters" do a good job, and always better than the C-L, which frequently copies about half of the UM post without attribution, at least when ENEMY Brandt is not at the game.  

This post is a Red Cup Rebellion FanPost. Please don't sue us.

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