A digitally altered photo of Christina Pushaw, rapid response director for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ re-election campaign, has circulated online with added coloring to her knees.
Examples of users sharing the altered photo can be seen (here) and (here).
An unaltered photo was tweeted on March 14 (here) by Rob Smith, a political analyst who contributes to Fox News (here).
Reuters was unable to source the original image, but it was widely shared as having been taken at a March 14 book event featuring Bethany Mandel and Karol Markowicz (twitter.com/karol), coauthors of “Stolen Youth” (here).
Markowicz also posted the unaltered photo to Instagram on March 14 (here). In the photo, Markowicz is seen (third from the left) wearing a pink dress and holding her book, while Pushaw (fifth from the left) is wearing a blue dress.
A Reuters comparison (imgur.com/a/Jb1THAN) of the original photo (top) and the altered version (bottom) shows where the photo was altered to make Pushaw’s knees appear redder in color than in the original.
VERDICT
Altered. The photo of Christina Pushaw has been altered to make her knees appear red.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts (here).
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