Great show, as usual. But I have a question. What is the real difference between manipulating words and manipulating photos?

Both are symbols–a word is a phonetic symbol, whereas a photo is a visual symbol–that (supposedly) have a referent in the real world.

When a word is manipulated, as in when ‘liberal’ is taken to mean “smarter” (as opposed to its real referent which is “a supporter of liberty”), its referent is rendered insubstantial, since most ‘liberals’ are complete idiots and don’t support liberty in any form but rather only leftist groupthink.

When a photo is manipulated, as in the Reuters’ photoshop scandal, its referent is also rendered insubstantial, since the real event the photo is supposed to depict never occurred to begin with.

All this goes to the issue of authorial intent. But the issue has morphed from what the author intended to say, or the photographer intended to depict, to his intention in manipulating the word or photo to refer to something that is not real. Which takes the current debate to another level.