Herald hypocrisy exposed

In today’s ZANU-PF propaganda tool The Herald, there’s a story on the use of stock photos in MDC-T’s recently-released manifesto.

BARELY a week after the MDC-T came under fire for importing foreign images in its manifesto and website, it has emerged that the party is using United States images on its campaign material posted on the party’s website. Most of the MDC-T flyers have images from US stock image websites Photobucket and Dreamstime and various other US websites.

As a web and graphic designer, this caught my attention immediately. The use of stock/agency photos is so widespread and normal as to be unremarkable. Unless you’re The Herald (or ‘Zimbabwe Guardian’ who are credited with the report) and are trying to score a political “gotcha”.

The only problem with trying to score points for your own team by accusing the other team of cheating? You have to be absolutely sure your team is cleaner than clean.

As someone who uses images constantly, I can almost spot a stock image from just a cursory glance. And a quick inspection of the ZANU-PF manifesto set the horns blaring (even though, and here’s the point, it shouldn’t, because it’s normal to use stock).

There are two stock images on Page 54 of the ZANU-PF manifesto, and that’s just a couple that I analysed. These came from Getty Images and Jupiter Images. So what now, Herald (and your handlers)? Was the ZANU-PF Manifesto also written overseas? Wait, don’t answer that.

Like I said above, it’s okay to use stock images in design work. That’s why the stocks are there!

Don’t even get me started on using web templates, like whoever put up the MDC-T’s obviously did, leading to ‘AmericanIconGate’.

But for The Herald and other captive media to bleat so shrilly about something so common as to be unremarkable, and use that as evidence of some nefarious Western agenda of regime-change via MDC proxy sellouts?

Hypocrisy of the highest order, guys. Logs, specks, that kind of thing.

You are idiots.