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 made up.

“Of course the pictures fake,” said a City Council spokesperson.

The Post declined to comment on whether the ad violated its own “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 and does not comply with decency standards. The New York Post reserves the right to slug advertisement with the word ‘advertisement’ when deemed necessary to make clear differentiation between editorial and advertising material.”

The Post does seem to have insisted on that step to differentiate through labeling. Indeed, the ad carries not one but two paid advertising labels, one saying 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 DeBlasio during disputes with him. “We have a particular method of sarcastic, political lampooning,” Samuelsen explained. “Same thing we’ve done to deBlasio and every other politician who has done us harm for no reason.”

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 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 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 everyday.”