celebrity

The video on Brad Pitt and Jen Aniston that shows just how misleading magazines can be.

Jen is pregnant with a miracle baby at 49! 

Brad and Jen are back together! 

Jen is bonding with Brad’s children! 

If your sole source of news was tabloid magazines, you’d be convinced actress Jennifer Aniston, 49, and her former husband, actor Brad Pitt, 54, are ready to elope and already planning what to do with the spare bedroom in the house they’re buying together.

But they’re not. There’s no real evidence they’ve even seen each other since Brad split with fellow actress Angelina Jolie in September 2016.

Jen has recently separated with her second husband Justin Theroux, and Brad has reportedly started a relationship with architect Neri Oxman.

But, ever committed to the quest of ‘giving the people what they want’, tabloid media doesn’t always concern itself with facts. And that has never been more clear than in a recent Media Watch segment.

The below clip from the ABC’s Media Watch reports that some recent Australian magazine covers aren’t only misleading, they’re entirely fabricated.

The ‘paparazzi shot’ of Brad and Jen walking side-by-side is actually – Media Watch reveals – two separate images of Brad and Jen as individuals, mashed together.

Another image of Jen apparently “bonding” with Brad and Angelina’s 11-year-old daughter Shiloh, is not Shiloh at all.

Instead, it’s Jen talking to a young co-star on the set of a 2009 movie, but the same knitted sweater has been photoshopped onto another image of Shiloh, who is walking with Brad. Put side-by-side and it’s incredibly convincing.

Back when Jen and Brad were really together in 2000, and there was no need for smashing images together. Via Getty.
ADVERTISEMENT

Finally, one of Brad and Jen kissing - "They can't keep their love secret any longer" - is not Brad and Jen kissing at all. Well, it is... But just not each other. 

It's made with two separate images spliced together - the originals show Jen kissing her co-star Jason Bateman on a movie set in 2009, and Brad kissing Angelina in 2010.

Media Watch host Paul Barry called it "deliberate deceit, breaching every rule of journalism".

And, after none of the publications implicated in the segment responded to Media Watch's requests for comment, Barry believes they "know they're guilty".

In this case, seeing really doesn't mean believing.

LISTEN: Why couple goals are bullsh*t.

00:00 / ???