Factcheck.org: Did Clinton Darken Obama's Skin?

A Page from the Attack-Ad Playbook
A standard technique used in attack ads is to portray the opponent in black and white while showing the person being supported in glorious, flattering color. And attack ads often use dark images to convey a sinister tone to the message. As the University of Pennsylvania's Kathleen Hall Jamieson (who is director of our parent organization) stated in her 1992 book Dirty Politics:

Dirty Politics (p. 51): Quick cuts, use of black and white, dark colors, shadowed lighting, stark contrasts, videotape, the voice of a seemingly 'neutral' announcer, and ominous music are the techniques associated with 'oppositional' production spots.

And in fact, when we compared the frames in the ad to frames from the debate video using the "eyedropper" tool in Photoshop image-processing software, we found that the frames in the Clinton ad are uniformly darker. We found no pronounced difference in the degree to which Obama's skin, as opposed to his tie, his shirt, or the backdrop was darkened.

We're not mind-readers, so we can't say whether or not the makers of this ad intended to engage in "race-baiting" or were "using racism to win" as some Obama partisans are claiming. Based on evidence at hand, we find those claims to be unsubstantiated. And the many potential differences between source footage, encoding manipulations, and other variables only make it less likely that any such attempt could be proven.

A final note: The last time we became aware of any clear example of digital manipulation was two years ago, when the Republican National Committee posted a Web image of Howard Dean with a hint of a little Hitler mustache. And charges of foul play were confirmed when the RNC posted a revised version, without the apparent mustache.

Update, March 6: We received several e-mails about our article that attempted to further the discussion. The two Kos bloggers who originally posted the story contacted us separately with thoughtful e-mails arguing generally that the matter deserves serious discussion but not
challenging the substance of our article. Both said they found no fault with our conclusions about the charges of racism. Troutnut said he didn't "contest [our] assertion that the netroots' accusation of race-baiting is 'unsubstantiated,' " and Jeff Cronin admitted the
"Race-Baiting" headline on Kos "was phrased in starker terms than I would have liked."

Another blogger who posts under the handle Berni_McCoy on DemocraticUnderground.com falsely accused us of having "POSTED A DOCTORED VIDEO" of Clinton's ad. Since his mistaken claims are attracting some notice in the blogosphere we will point out his error here.

He compared the Windows Media video of the ad posted on our site with a QuickTime version of the ad that he obtained from Clinton's campaign Web site. He then displayed frame shots from these two versions and stated "the difference is clear." He concluded that we are "completely wrong" or "directly falsifying the 'facts.' "

McCoy, however, falsely said that our Windows Media video is derived from the Clinton QuickTime version, which it is not. Our video is a copy of the high-quality video recorded by CMAG as it appeared on the air in Texas. So what McCoy imagines is evidence that we "doctored" video obtained from the Clinton Web site is actually evidence that supports
what we said in the first place: Versions of the Clinton ad from different sources show different shadings, and the YouTube version on which the "racism" claim rests is the darkest of the lot.