Monday, August 07, 2006

Reuters axes photographer over doctored picture

A Reuters photographer has been suspended by the agency for doctoring pictures of a bomb blast in Beirut. Photoshop software, apparently, was used by the photographer, Adnan Hajj, to add substantially to the density of the smoke rising from above the city's buildings, and to increase the scale of the damage. Once alerted to the fraud, Reuters withdrew the picture, replaced it with the original, untouched version, and announced that it would not be using more of Hajj's work.

A Reuters spokeswoman in London, Moira Whittle, said: "This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards, and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him."

How did the picture slip past the photo editors? Don't know. But I'm glad that, once confronted, the agency behaved responsibly.

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