Doctored photo fiasco emerges from Beirut
Questions about journalistic integrity emerged this weekend from the continuing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, after a photojournalist was found to have doctored two images out of Beirut.
The Reuters News Agency has withdrawn more than 900 images from its database taken by Adnan Hajj, one of its freelance photographers based in Beirut.
Responding to allegations of tampering, Reuters discovered that Hajj had manipulated two recent photos: one showing the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on a suburban neighbourhood and another showing an Israeli jet fighter flying over southern Lebanon.
The first photo had been manipulated to show more and darker smoke rising from the buildings, while the second image showed the plane dropping three flares instead of just one, Reuters said.
"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image", Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters Global Picture Editor, said in a statement.
"Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy."
Quick reaction over the weekend
After Reuters published the smoking buildings photo on Saturday, the online community began accusing that the photo was altered. The agency conducted a review and found the image had indeed been changed using Photoshop. Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj on Sunday.
The agency then began an immediate review of Hajj's other recent work and, on Monday, found that the jet photo taken Aug. 2 had also been doctored. Reuters then withdrew from its database the 920 photos Hajj had taken for the agency over the years.
"This doesn't mean that every one of his 920 photographs in our database was altered. We know that not to be the case from the majority of images we have looked at so far but we need to act swiftly and in a precautionary manner," Szlukovenyi said.
According to a Reuters spokesperson, Hajj has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the photos, saying he was trying to remove dust and made mistakes because of poor lighting conditions.
Hajj has also worked as a freelancer for the Associated Press, which is reviewing his photos in its own archive to verify their authenticity.
Incident mars others' reputations: photojournalist
The fiasco takes away the public's trust in the media and undermines the work of other photojournalists, said photographer John D. McHugh, who was recently embedded with Canadian and British troops in Afghanistan.
"To the trained eye, you're not going to get away with doing this for very long," McHugh told CBC News.
"Even if you have no ethics, if you've totally given up on the work you're doing and you have no commitment to telling the truth anymore, you're just not going to get away with this because it's just pretty obvious."
Despite changes in how journalists cover the news today, the golden rule is still the same, said Adrian Monck, professor and head of journalism at the U.K.'s City University in London.
"The technology hasn't changed the ball game. The ball game is simple: Tell the truth. Have integrity," he said.
Reuters says it has tightened the process in which photographs from the Middle East are filed, with only senior staff editing images on the Global Pictures Desk and a final check made by the editor-in-charge.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has entered its fourth week.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/nation...er-beirut.html