Tiger Woods, Obama, and the Fake Golf Digest Cover Photo

Lost in all the chatter last week about Tiger Woods' philandering was a scandal of a different sort: the January issue of Golf Digest features a cover of the famous golfer apparently playing a round with President Obama. Tiger appears as the presidential golf advisor, standing behind the President as he crouches to line up a putt. The cover line says, "10 Tips Obama Can Take from Tiger."

We'll skip the jokes about driving tips, and cut to the real news here: Barack and Tiger never golfed together. The cover photo is a composite. A fake. Call it what you will. Slate, ABC News, and Huffington Post, among others, have called attention to the photo. But the outrage, to the extent that there is any from Golf Digest readers, seems mostly about that magazine's decision to celebrate Tiger after all the disappointment he's caused his family and fans.

But as Bob Carney, the editor of Golf Digest points out on his editor's blog, the cover was "completed and closed well in advance" of Tiger's Thanksgiving weekend meltdown. And then Carney goes on not to apologize for publishing a fake cover, but to practically boast about it:

"It was a photo illustration, based on a shoot with body doubles done in Los Angeles by photographer Martin Ellis. The fact that is looks like it might have been a photo is testament to the work of our [staff]."

Why do magazines keep doing this, when they know it's impossible these days not to get caught? Because it's good for newsstand sales, plain and simple. What better way to catch peoples' attention than by running a cover photo that features not one, but two A-list celebrities? Which isn't to say it's right, but money talks, and readers don't complain all that much about retouched images, or even completely fake ones.

Comments

[Dan Brouillette]

Get caught? I don't think any of their readers thought it was real nor do I think GD ever claimed it was...it's just a cover designed to sell magazines and I bet it works.

[David Strohl]

I think you're being a bit ridiculous here... Are you really condemning *golf digest* for using a photo illustration,as if they are required to adhere some strict journalistic guidelines?

The magazine is free to do what it wants, there is no "getting caught". And as the editor pointed out, it's actually a rather well done composite.

Frankly this is irresponsible "journalism" on a rather widely read (and generally respected) publication. However I'm sure you and your editors know that a 'scandalous' post like this will probably result in a lot of web traffic. And what's good for web traffic is good for money, and in the end that's the whole point, right?

When does that Murdoch/Newscorp purchase of PDN go through? Or maybe it already has...

[Isaac Hernandez phototao.com]

I saw this cover at the airport yesterday. I thought it was obviously an illustration, and that it was done well before the "scandal". What occurs to me as funny is that both Tiger and Obama are at their lowest popularity ratings; I wondered how that was supposed to sell magazines. I didn't buy it. But here I'm, talking about it.