Haneef vilification sketches: Updated

I outlined in an earlier post what I saw as vilifying pictures of Haneef published in the Murdoch press, and today I find the Murdoch press still publishing them, and I found a picture on the website, this time on the home page of The Australian.

I’m very interested in people’s votes as to the most accurate drawing, and which might be promoting bias against the man.  How do these compare in accuracy to typical "identikit" pictures drawn from (fallible) memory rather than from life as court pictures are?

Photo	Murdoch	Fairfax	ABC
	This is a neanderthal, a better fit to the Murdoch picture than the real man.
	This is a photo from the India Times: I wonder why we have not seen this in Oz media?  Too human?

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UPDATE UPDATE 2007-07-27 : Haneef is released and the Murdoch press decide to portray him as an actual human!
2007-07-27, Haneef is released, and the Murdoch press show him as a human: 

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The Age photo after the release:

END OF UPDATE

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I can’t help but wonder if the Murdoch artist drew a number of images, and the editors chose the most "evil looking" in order to vilify the man and promote subconcious acceptance of the Canberra Central Committee’s Kafkaesque actions.

The most obvious thing is the shape of the eyebrows: in the photo, the Fairfax and the ABC images, the eyebrows have a pronounced arch, whereas in the Murdoch image they are flat, and drawn to minimize the distance above the eyes, giving the "neanderthal" appearance I spoke of in the earlier article.

Next, the prominent (or at least relatively high) checkbones apparent in the non-Murdoch images were flattened, lowered and moved to the side in the Oz/Hun.

The whole proportions of the face (which from the photo seems to be relatively long) seem to have been squashed flat and broadened by the Murdoch press.

The legal arguments about the case and the actions of the executive apparently in contempt of the intentions of the judiciary are being dealt with elsewhere by those much more competent than I (start with Andrew Bartlett’s comments), but I do think that the actions of the Murdoch press need some attention to determine if there is any bias evident from their graphic misrepresentations, what the Murdoch motive is, and whether there is any method to sanction such behaviour as it may be prejudicial to court proceedings in a much more subtle and damaging way than the omission of the word "alleged" in reporting a situation in words.

How is the Murdoch press representation any less vilifying by twisting facial characteristics than the following depiction of semites?: 

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See Also

• A 2007-07-21 post that uses this example to explore the general idea of misreporting of court events in media other than pure text.

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