Iranian Space Official: Photo Shows Wrong Monkey

Hmm. What that article actually says is that a western news organization ran an image that they claimed they found on an Iranian news website, but when that Iranian site was checked later the same day no such image was found - the unaltered original was found there though.

In fact, nobody has been able to find the altered image being served by Iranian media anywhere, it seems. So it ends up being "he said she said". That's why the article says

So far, though, it can?t be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance. Sepah apparently published the three-missile version of the image today without further explanation.

There could be any number of explanations for that, including a patriotic but rogue photographer on the Iranian side, or even some kind of Western propaganda. I'm very doubtful that AFP has been compromised, it's more likely it was done by the Iranians, but unfortunately there is a history of absurdly flaky forgeries that support the case for war against middle eastern countries surfacing through the press. At any rate, it's impossible to conclude from this that there's some kind of systematic Iranian policy of photoshopping news images.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/NsLRvVrE8Wg/story01.htm

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