NYT Tripped By Stray Cat; Uses Modified Obama Photo in Krugman Column

November 24th, 2015 11:46 AM

[Update, 12:24 pm, November 24, 2015: Krugman updated his item with the following claim regarding the cat photo: "Yes, I know there's a cat in the picture; I took it from Slate, 'The Cats of War.' I've used that image before, to lighten things up slightly. Apparently I didn't succeed." The photoshopped picture included in the blog entry now includes a photo credit to Slate as well.]

On Monday, the New York Times inadvertently created the latest cat photo to go viral online. The newspaper posted a blog entry from liberal columnist Paul Krugman, and included what it thought was the famous photo of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other high-ranking administration officials watching the feed from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. However, it was actually a photoshopped version of the picture, which includes a white cat peering up from under the table (see screen cap below).

Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon (a former contributor to NewsBusters), pointed out the graphical slip-up in a Tuesday post on Twitter (embedded below):