Mr. Kristof Invents Cairo -- Screenshots of a Devious Thumbnail

The Emperor's New Clothes (TENC) * www.tenc.net

This page has various screenshots of the thumbnail used by Nicholas D. Kristof to represent his video, "Meeting Mubarak's Supporters," which is discussed in the Emperor's Clothes article, "Mr. Kristof Invents Cairo. A critique of media coverage of the February 2, 2011 fighting in Tahrir Square, using the example of an article and video by a star columnist at the leading newspaper of the Western world, The New York Times," posted at http://emperors-clothes.com/kristof.htm

The screenshots of Kristof's thumbnail are from the New York Times page at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/opinion/03kristof.html

The image reproduced in #6 and #7 of Ed Ou's original photo is taken from the website
http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/andkozakov/view/461553?page=0

All these images are copyright Ed Ou/The New York Times 2011. They are reproduced here for educational purposes, for Fair Use Only.

The URL for this page is http://tenc.net/kristof_vid.htm

4. This is a screenshot of the image of Kristof's thumbnail as it appears after the copyright information, at the end of his video "Meeting Mubarak's Supporters," when viewed in full screen mode. Compare this to Ed Ou's original photo, posted below as #6. Ou's original has much higher resolution in spite that it has been enlarged about 30% to make it 1280 pixels wide, the same width as Kristof's thumbnauil in full screen mode. Since this is a New York Times photo, which Kristof could get with the highest resolution possible, it is incomprehensible that #4 (from the New York Times) would have a much lower resolution than #6 (which was purchased from the Times unless Kristof wanted the resolution much lower.

So: 'Lying better through modern technology.'

6. Below is the New York Times photo enlarged from 950 pixels width (as posted on a Russian website) to 1280, which involves approximately a 30% loss in resolution. Notice that the resolution is still much higher than in the 1280 pixel-wide image used in Kristof's video, seen in full screen mode, as posted above as picture #4. The point: since this is a New York Times photo, Kristof could have the thumbnail produced at any size with highest resolution. But he chose to use a low definition image, for the apparent purpose of making it harder to see that men are praying in front of the tank.

7. This is Ed Ou's image as posted in several sizes, including 950 pixels in width (as below) at http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/andkozakov/view/461553?page=0 This has somewhat better resolution than #6, which was enlarged from this image.