Background Lie

What's wrong with this picture?


Here is New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Bill Richardson speaking on national television about President George W. Bush’s proposal to have National Guard troops work on border protection last week.

The governor is a regular, speaking on a variety of topics commensurate with his knowledge and wide range of governmental experiences. He represented New Mexico’s 3rd U.S. congressional district, as its first representative for six terms from 1983-97, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 1997-98 and U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1998 to 2001. He was elected governor in 2001.

Oft times when Richardson is to appear on network or cable TV, the broadcasters make arrangements with a local television studio to host the governor and send the electronic television feed via satellite.


The popular local studio is KNME 5, the public broadcasting corporation station, funded by the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque Public Schools. KNME provides the service because it has a lot of available time, while the other local stations have tighter schedules as they are always preparing their studios for upcoming newscasts throughout the day.

Setting up the studio is not very difficult. The governor is provided with a chair, a desk, a microphone and a backdrop, under lights, in front of a camera.

Richardson is seen in multiple monitors of KNME's control booth while he spoke last year with Fox News Cable discussing rising oil prices as the former Secretary of Energy and the governor of an oil producing state.

The governor seems to equate himself with a fair degree of eloquence and is seen regularly. It is an open secret that he is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008.

So what’s wrong with this picture?


It’s the backdrop.

Look carefully. In the foreground you are looking west towards downtown Albuquerque’s skyline with the Sandia Mountains in the background. The problem is the Sandia Mountains are east of downtown or behind the point of view.

The backdrop is a fabricated image.

Our city and state are already screwed up enough that we don’t have to broadcast it to the national television viewing audience. The little lie of the picture begs the question; is it the only lie?