A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lies

The New York Times is on a roll. 

Twice in one week–I should say twice in one week that I know of–they have used highly deceptive photos to push a narrative. 

EGREGIOUS HACKERY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

They’re using a photo from 1954—71 years ago— to fearmonger about President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s environmental policy agenda.

Headline: “Inside the ‘Radical Transformation’ of America’s Environmental Role”

Subhead:… pic.twitter.com/Zy3iz0Cw33

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 3, 2025

The first time, we all know, is that famous photo of a “starving” child in Gaza who turned out to be suffering from a genetic disease. His mother and brother were well-fed, and Israel had nothing to do with the condition of the child, but the Times plastered this photo on the front page, and it covered about 1/4 of the page. One week later, they clarified that the condition of the child was genetic–using an “Editor’s Note” released through their PR X feed, which has only a few thousand followers. 

They know what they were doing. And, no doubt, they are proud that they deceived their readers. In their own mind they were showing you what they “feel” truth should be, and if it takes a bit of deception to get their readers to feel the right emotions and to do what the editors think is the right thing, then deceive them they will. 

This new outrage is using a photo of a polluted Los Angeles in 1954 to illustrate a story complaining that Trump’s EPA will no longer regulate CO2 emissions. 

CO2 doesn’t create smog, of course. It is odorless, colorless, makes up a minuscule part of our atmosphere, and is harmless to human beings until concentrations reach levels unimaginable under any but the most unnatural conditions. 

In what way is there a connection between a smoggy street in Los Angeles and 1954? None, unless the editors want to create a false linkage between something we all hate–pollution–and something about which few people care–CO2. Smog, if anything, would counteract global warming by reducing the sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. 

Not that we should wish for more smog, although that is one of the proposed “geoengineering” schemes. When you hear some gleeful scientist talking about injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, it is essentially recreating smog at a higher level in the atmosphere. It is called stratospheric aerosol injection, and it is making a lot of people nervous. 

I don’t particularly like the idea myself, but it doesn’t scare me either because the idea is actually not untied. We did a natural experiment, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere by burning a lot of coal, and we survived. Of course, back then, people complained of acid rain, and we cleaned up our coal, but I doubt that anything man can do will have much effect in the longer term. 

In any case, my point has little to do with smog or geoengineering–it has to do with the Times’ and Pravda’s obsession with lying to people “for their own good.” The writers at the Times believe that climate change is an existential threat, or at least a good tool to beat people into accepting Marxism, so they equate CO2 with smog. They imply that Trump wants to smogify the world. 

Misusing photographs and illustrations this way is a variation on the deceptive headline–create the narrative you want before anybody’s rational mind can kick in. Only with photographs is it even more impactful and deceptive. 

The old saw that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is ridiculously wrong. A picture is worth a lot more than that, and almost nobody reads a thousand words anymore. If 10% of people read more than a paragraph, the writer is lucky. Pictures and headlines shape what most people think, and the Times knows that. 

That is why they do it. 

• Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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