Union Targets Council Member, and His Battle Against Carriage Horses, Using Faked Ad Images

The image is jarring: a smiling member of the City Council, Erik Bottcher, who represents Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, and a slice of Greenwich Village, high-stepping over an apparently homeless man sleeping rough on a littered street.

The image was proffered by the union representing the drivers of Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages in an effort, they say, to suggest that Bottcher, who wants to ban the carriages to protect the horses, cares more about horses than people.

The thing is, the image is a fake.

Manufactured images have of course proliferated in the Wild West of the Internet. But this image didn’t start on the Internet. It ran as a full-page advertisement in New York’s oldest print newspaper, the New York Post.

The ad, on page 13 in print editions on Monday, Aug. 18, was labeled as “paid advertising” and signed by the union, the Transport Workers. But nothing suggested the content was fake.

“Of course the picture’s fake,” said a City Council spokesperson.

The Post declined to comment on whether the ad violated the paper’s “Acceptability Guidelines,” which are published on The Post’s website and state:

“All advertising is pending publisher’s approval. The New York Post reserves the right to decline advertising that is inaccurate or misleading. . . . ”

The Post does seem to have insisted on labeling the image as paid advertising. One of two such labels says it was paid for by the Transport Workers Union.

The president of the union, John Samuelsen, defended the ad as proper political commentary, akin to a political cartoon.

“It’s graphic art,” said Samuelsen. “It’s lampooning.” He recalled that the union had used the same technique to mock Mayor Bill de Blasio during disputes with him. “We have a particular method of sarcastic, political lampooning,” Samuelsen explained.

The union ran a second ad attacking Bottcher in the Wednesday, Aug. 20, print edition of Post, also with a mocked-up photo, this time showing him on his cell phone. This, Samuelsen said, was to highlight an episode in which Bottcher was caught on video scrolling through his phone as the Speaker of the City Council, Adrienne Adams, read the names of city workers, including a TWU member, killed on duty.

The union shared the original video on X, formerly Twitter.

Samuelsen said the illustration of Bottcher stepping over a homeless person was also “based on a real photo” of Bottcher as he “strided past” homeless people to speak at a news conference attacking the treatment of the carriage horses.

“He continues to run with the narrative that the horses are mistreated,” Samuelsen said. “And it’s a lie. It’s a complete lie. He may not like it. But let him go to Amish country and yell at the Amish, where this goes on every day.”

Samuelsen said he did not have the original photo that he claimed was the inspiration for the photoshopped image in the ad.

Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and design at the News Literacy Project, notes that images can be far more powerful and memorable than even “the most apt and incisive written descriptions” of events

“This is why such a wide array of information actors—from advertisers and activists to trolls and propagandists—often use enhanced, altered, or fabricated imagery to achieve specific goals,” said Adams.

Advertising is in a “murky” ethical area, Adams said, because consumers approach it with an awareness that advertisers “idealize their products in different ways.”

“But . . . enhancing the appearance of a fast-food burger is quite different than doctoring or fabricating an image of a public figure in a political ad,” Adams said. “The FTC has guidelines that call for advertisers to avoid practices that a reasonable consumer is likely to find deceptive, and most reputable news organizations have similar guidelines for the ads they run.”

A clear test, Adams explained, is whether the image of Bottcher could “reasonably” be seen as a real photo. Admittedly, one loyal Post reader, who happened to be a correspondent for this newspaper, thought the photo looked fake and asked about it, producing this story.

“It’s a little on the line, ethically,” Adams said, “yet neither the Post nor the advertiser saw the need to add a disclaimer of any sort, which, in my view, they probably should have.”

The issue prompting the union’s attack ads on Bottcher is his legislation to phase out horse-drawn carriages in Central Park and replace them with electric-powered vehicles.

The issue received renewed attention this summer when a carriage horse collapsed and died, reinforcing allegations that the horses are overworked and abused, although in this case the horse, Lady, apparently had a brain tumor that led to an aortic rupture, the union said.

“NYC’s iconic carriage horses are not mistreated,” the Transport Workers Union states in the advertisement. “Bottcher has repeatedly refused to tour their stables and meet the drivers and veterinarians involved in their care.”

The advertisement portrayed Bottcher as a media hound. “Once, he even practically stepped over a homeless man to get on the mic at a press conference,” the ad alleged. That claim was the impetus for the faked image.

Bottcher is a well-known advocate for better treatment of unhoused New Yorkers and has appeared at numerous press conferences on the topic. But the council spokesman said he was unaware of any incident that resembled the union’s allegation.

Bottcher, who is seeking a hearing for his bill to ban horse-drawn carriages, declined an offer to respond to the ad.

Adams from the News Literacy Project, which offers training and curriculum to increase the sophistication of news consumers, said the fake image in the Bottcher ad was reminiscent of a political TV ad during the Republican presidential primaries last year.

In that ad, supporting Governor Ron DeSantis against Donald Trump and others, there were images of Trump “hugging” Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is widely unpopular among Republican voters.

The images were generated by artificial intelligence. “It was highly deceptive and wasn’t disclosed either,” said Adams.

“Given the rapid development and increasing availability of generative AI tools, we can only expect this problem to get worse,” Adams added, “which means everyone needs to sharpen their ability to recognize ads and put them into context even as they insist on continued transparency and decency from advertisers and publishers alike.”