Tom Blumer uses an April 12 NewsBusters post to promote a USA Today columnist’s claim that President Obama’s daughter faces more of an asthma risk from his smoking than from global warming. The image used to promote the post on NewsBusters’ front page is one of Obama with a cigarette in his mouth (shown at right). The image appears again inside the post.
But that image is a fake. As the Museum of Hoaxes details, a cigarette was Photoshopped into a reversed 2004 photo of Obama.
Nowhere in the post does NewsBusters identify the photo as a faked image.
It seems that running hoax photos would keep NewsBusters from being taken seriously as a media watchdog, but apparently being taken seriously is not an issue.