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Fact check: Viral photo of Chris Rock wearing a cheek pad is photoshopped

Bayliss Wagner   | Paste BN
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The claim: Photo shows Chris Rock wearing a cheek pad before Will Smith slap

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has begun "disciplinary proceedings" against actor Will Smith after he slapped fellow actor and comedian Chris Rock in response to a joke about Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony on March 27. 

Some social media users are suspicious of the incident, however. One Facebook post that generated more than 25,000 shares and 6,000 comments in a few days used a viral photo of Rock to claim that the slap was staged.

"In 8k quality images you can see a pad on Chris Rock's cheek," the image included in the post reads. "Conspiracy theorists gonna go crazy with this one." 

The photo and this caption, which come from a popular March 28 tweet, show Rock with what seems to be a skin-colored pad on his left cheek. 

"I went to school for television production," the user who posted the viral Facebook post wrote above the image. "Trust me, everything you see on your TV screen is produced before it happens."

But the cheek pad image is digitally created. Pictures from an array of sources confirm Rock had nothing attached to his face at the time of the slap.

Paste BN reached out to several users who shared the post for comment.

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Photos show there was not a cheek pad  

Ample evidence indicates that the viral photo was digitally manipulated to create the illusion that Rock was wearing a cheek pad when he was not.

The original image was taken for Reuters by photographer Brian Snyder, as the news agency's fact-check team reported. It does not show a cheek pad, even when zoomed in, as a photo comparison from Reuters shows.

The version that went viral also lacks detail, which suggests the photo has been artificially blown up and sharpened. For example, a high-resolution backstage photo from the moments after the slap shows that Rock had stubble on his chin (see below). In the viral "cheek pad" image, however, his chin appears completely smooth.

Other snapshots from numerous sources and angles, including these images from Paste BN photographer Robert Hanashiro, show Rock was not wearing any kind of protective pad over his cheek. Neither does a high-resolution video of the incident posted by the Guardian.

Fact check: False claim that Chris Rock apologized to Will Smith after Oscars slap

Our rating: Altered

Based on our research, we rate ALTERED a photo that claims to show Rock wearing a cheek pad before he was slapped by Smith. The original photo comes from Reuters and does not show the cheek pad, showing that the photo was manipulated. The lack of stubble on Rock's face in the supposedly high-quality picture also indicates that it was manipulated. Photos from other sources confirm there was no pad on Rock's face at that moment.

Our fact-check sources:

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