Comments on: Rapist Search

Question: Rapist Search

king walnut — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:52:43 -0800

Is this photo real?

I can only find it on funny pic sites, so probably not I guess, but I wonder if anyone knows for sure. I checked snopes and a few other places.

By: drjimmy11

drjimmy11 — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:08:33 -0800

I have often wondered the same thing. Don't know the answer, but I'm pretty sure that is a real anchor on ABC7 in Los Angeles, if that helps at all.

By: chrisamiller

chrisamiller — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:14:05 -0800

Zooming in on the image doesn't reveal any obvoius artifacts, but the JPEG compression makes it hard to tell very definitively. My vote is for yes, it's real.

That said, the two don't really look very much alike.

By: b33j

b33j — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:33:24 -0800

I would guess not, because the text 'Rapist Search' is not aligned with the border above or below it.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:37:14 -0800

That's Marc Brown from KABC, if it helps.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:38:01 -0800

That's Marc Brown, of LA's ABC7 as drjimmy11 says. From his bio, he doesn't appear to be in the pokey.

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:39:18 -0800

Seconding drjimmy11. I remember when this first made the rounds about a year ago, someone said he was Marc Brown from the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles. That might help you in your search for its authenticity. Here's his bio from the ABC-7 website.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:27:35 -0800

I'm with b33j; the fact that the text isn't aligned with the rest of the inset image screams "fake" to me.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:35:30 -0800

When enlarged, the artist's sketch looks more blurred/out of focus than Marc Brown.

By: onepapertiger

onepapertiger — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:41:46 -0800

It looks like someone took a picture of a television.

By: carpyful

carpyful — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:12:39 -0800

Despite being hilarious, I would say it's fake because of the misaligned text. The graphic framing the picture has a curved effect going on that the text doesn't follow. Either it's a fake, or the graphics team at LA's ABC 7 is pretty sub-par.

By: Mikey-San

Mikey-San — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:37:56 -0800

Dunno if it's real or not, but I could believe something like that could be a bad stylistic decision by the graphics department. I've seen worse on local news broadcasts.

By: -harlequin-

-harlequin- — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:13:19 -0800

I would guess not, because the text 'Rapist Search' is not aligned with the border above or below it.

This might not be significant - a lot of video graphics overlay software (especially years ago) would place titles and images separately, and most users would overlay the text on a background image (for various pipeline reasons), and a lot of these programs could not do complex transforms to text, and even those that could... doesn't mean that the operator would.
The curves of the background image do suggest "we're trying to make our stuff look more organic, but we're working around our titling limits by making the curve of the bar as much as we can before it starts to show that it doesn't align with the text."

That's about the same amount of curve I'd put in when I was working around similar limits, but it never looks quite right. So to me, that text missmatch looks like a production company trying to spruce up their presentation style within the limits of their tools, rather than a photoshop job.

By: magikker

magikker — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:33:33 -0800

I'd say it's real simply because if I photoshop'd the image I wouldn't have taken a picture of my TV to do it. Also I wouldn't have curved in the image to try and make it look classy. I probably woudn't have know how to degrade the insterted image to look like the rest of the picture on the TV. (Notice the difference in quality between the picture on the TV and the fram of the TV it's self.) If that is photoshop'd they did a really good job, either that or I'm a lazy photoshopper.

By: jwells

jwells — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:50:51 -0800

It's probably real. The picture URL has 2006 in it so I searched the archives of ABC 7 for rape, pulled the likely articles from 2006, searched the suspect's names in Google, and got this:

Alleged Movie Theater Rapist Arrested

America's Most wanted even got involved: Marque Clark

By: zpousman

zpousman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:52:20 -0800

I vote for not fake -- those guys don't look the same. One is gaunt with a more rectangular head. The newscaster is chubby-cheeked and has a rounder head. They are both black, however, so perhaps they are the same person. I mean, their eyes are kinda the same and it's enough to be funny, but it's not enough to be uncanny or anything.

By: swbarrett

swbarrett — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:07:04 -0800

the graphics and production on that channel are god-awful
and i've seen that photo taken from diff angles also

real

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:30:55 -0800

That looks very tough to photoshop. The glare looks perfect and the graphics look fine. If you examine the graphic you'll see that it tapers but the inserted text is straight. That's News Production 101. Its only recently that you'll see snazzy graphics at local affiliates.

If it was fake you would also think that the drawing would look more like the newscaster. Bigger forehead, less lines in the cheeks, etc. Maybe even wearing the same suit. Its looks off enough to suggest being real, or at least not suggest a likely fraud.

By: jwells

jwells — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:46:54 -0800

In my link above, Alleged Movie Theater Rapist Arrested, I should have stated the sketch is shown clearly. The poster writes:

"I wrote about the "Movie Theater Rapist" quite awhile ago. In that entry I marveled at how well the 10-year-old victim was able to provide such a clear description of her attacker. It enabled a police sketch artist to create the composite shown on the left.

Pictured to the right of the composite sketch is 31-year-old Marque Clark, the recently apprehended suspect, who confessed to the crime."

The newscaster isn't mentioned at all. This is the real context of the photo.