Anyone else find this trend a little disturbing? I keep seeing pictures that are "too real".

Example:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1203370/Pictured-U-S-missile-defence-test-hailed-success-North-Korea-tensions-rise.html

Look at the missile launch shots. That's not what the world looks like to my eyes.

Hummm...I know that a russian missile failed by the 6th time in a row. Missile failure isnt something that big nations care about hiding/supressing.

I don't see the big deal.

holy shit that is some blue fucking water

anyway, the more real than real thing was going through my head at points during I am Legend.

That's the Daily Mail for you

That's kinda my point, the water did not look like that. It's HDR manipulation, which was explained to me as bracketing a photo and merging the different exposures into one.

It's a cool trick for travel photos or album covers, but news photos should be real.

What about information manipulation to begin with?

Here is the video of the test

Bracketing exposures doesn't make the image less real, in fact it tries to make the image more like our eyes would see it. Camera's aren't able to pick up the dynamic range our eyes can. If that water looks too blue, it's to do with hue/saturation/channels/curves etc., not merging exposures or HDR.

Interesting. You don't think merging exposures would change the color?

Not from merging exposures, no. That would mean that one of the exposures taken would have captured that color and was then blended with the other exposures. Those images look to have had the saturation upped and by doing that any "blues" that were originally there have been exaggerated.

I also don't think the blue in the water is completely due to the water, looks more to be a reflection of the blue in the sky.

GD pretty much nailed it. I'd just add that a lot of HDR software programs do more than just merge different exposure levels. In addition to boosting saturating, the programs (like Photomatix) create this soft halo around the subjects that give it a surreal kind of look.
I almost always use multiple exposures when shooting mid day on a sunny day. In that photo, it would be hard to properly expose the ship without overexposing the sky.
However, I agree that the soft halo look is over the top for a news story. But I don't have any problem with this particular picture.

That is true about HDR programs, I don't have much experience with them. I tend to just bracket my exposures in difficult lighting situations, such as dscans pointed out on a bright, sunny day.
I think HDR is difficult to do well, I don't see very many good ones but when it is done well it can look fantastic. Unfortunately most people way overcook it.