By Donald R. Winslow
ZURICH (August 7, 2006) – Fresh on the heels of last week's photojournalism ethics controversies about Patrick Schneider's color-altered image that led to the end of his employment as a Charlotte Observer staff photographer, and el Nuevo Herald's doctoring of two images to create one fake photo to illustrate an anti-Castro story without telling readers the manipulated picture was a "montage," now Reuters News Pictures is in the ethics hot seat for publishing at least two doctored news photographs taken during the current clash between Israel and Lebanon.
The photographs, by Lebanese freelancer Adnan Hajj, show thick smoke rising from downtown Beirut after an Israeli bombing raid on Saturday, and in a second doctored photo the number of flares dropped from an Israeli F-16 have been increased from one to three and misidentified in the caption as "missiles."
In the first picture the smoke appears to have been awkwardly doctored using the cloning tool of photographic editing software in order to make it look more intense. After a series of Web sites displayed the picture on Sunday and discredited the image by showing how it had been manipulated, Reuters issued a statement removing the picture from their archives and apologizing "for the inconvenience." The statement also said, "A corrected version (of the picture) will immediately follow this advisory."
The "corrected" version, the original photograph, transmitted by Reuters after the advisory did show plenty of smoke rising the city but it was thinner, and not so well defined into thick columns.
After the first picture was discovered and Reuters reacted, they discovered his second altered photograph during an investigation on Monday.
In London, the head of public relations for Reuters said on Sunday that the photojournalist has been suspended until "investigations are completed into changes made to the photograph."
"Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously and it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures," Moira Whittle said. In a news story about the picture, distributed by Reuters, she also says, "The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under."
"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," she said in a statement issued in London.
In a statement just released late Monday, Reuters now also says: “Reuters has withdrawn from its database all photographs taken by Beirut-based freelancer Adnan Hajj after establishing that he had altered two images since the start of the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Hizbollah group.”
In reponse, Reuters also says that it has put in place a “tighter editing procedure” for images of the Middle East conflict “to ensure that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the Reuters global pictures desk in Singapore.”
"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image", said Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters Global Picture Editor. "Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy."
The latest statement Monday from Reuters says that an immediate investigation began into Hajj’s other work as a result of the first photo in question, the picture of smoke over the city. It found on Monday, the statement said, that "A second photograph, of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, and dated August 2 had been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three. The caption also misidentified the objects as missiles rather than flares, which warplanes release as a defensive measure."
All photographs transmitted to clients by Reuters are sent from the service's picture desk in Singapore. Photographers, regardless of where they are shooting in the world, now send their pictures to the Singapore desk for editing and redistribution. This has not always been the case for Reuters. Before the picture service was "downsized" and reorganized last year, there were Reuter picture desks in Washington, London, and Hong Kong where editors and managers reviewed the photo report. Photographers in each third of the world filed pictures to their appropriate bureau. London was the main picture desk, overseeing global operations. Many of the experienced picture editors who had been with Reuters for many years did not relocate to Singapore in the downsizing. Additionally, pictures do not move on the network automatically. An editor must review the photograph and caption before sending it out to clients.
"Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout its long and distinguished history. It undermines not only our reputation but also the good name of all our photographers," said David Schlesinger, the global managing editor for Reuters.
Szlukovenyi said the fact that Hajj altered two of his photographs meant none of his work for Reuters could be trusted either by the news service or its users. "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." All of his photographs have been removed from the database.
Hajj has freelanced for Reuters since 1993 until 2003, and again since April 2005. Reuters reports that he was among several photographers whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in Qana, Lebaon, on July 30 after an Israeli air strike, have been challenged by blogs as staged. Reuters and other news organizations have reviewed those images and they have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged in any manner.
A Summer Of Mistakes
The Reuters picture is just the latest ethical misstep in photojournalism this summer that has online photojournalism communities worked up into heated discussions on Web sites, discussion boards, and on Blogs about what is - and isn't - acceptable in the new digital era of news photography.
Two weeks ago, The Charlotte Observer's editor issued a public apology to readers for an image published on the front of the newspaper's local section that showed a firefighter atop a ladder spraying water down on an apartment complex fire, and the subject was silhouetted against a bright orange sky. Editor Rich Thames says photojournalist Patrick Schenider inappropriately altered the color of the sky from its original shade of brownish-gray, violating the newspaper's ethics policy on altering the color or content of photographic images. For his offense, Thames says, Schneider "no longer works for The Observer."
In 2003, Schneider was suspended from work without pay for three days for adjusting colors in photographs that were entered in the North Carolina Press Photographers Association’s annual contest after some NCPPA members and leaders of the organization complained about three of his images. Their complaint came after the contest’s judging was finished and awards had been determined, but not when the photographs were submitted for competition. The pictures under scrutiny had not been altered when they were published in the newspaper but only in preparation for the contest. As a result of the investigation that followed the complaint, Schneider’s three awards for the pictures were rescinded by the NCPPA and he was suspended from work for three days.
Just days before Schneider's current problem photograph appeared in the Observer this year, editors at a Spanish-language newspaper, el Nuevo Herald, combined part of an Associated Press photograph with part of a freelancer's photograph to create one fake image that appeared to show Cuban police ignoring prostitutes and prostitution. The picture was published along with an anti-Castro story and the caption and photo credit made no mention of the photograph being anything except a real news picture. When confronted with the fake picture, executive editor Humberto Castello admitted in a news story that "a mistake" had been made in not telling readers the picture was "a montage." Yet no editors or designers were disciplined or fired.
The Charlotte Observer and el Nuevo Herald are both owned by The McClatchy Company, two of several newspapers they recently purchased from Knight Ridder. McClatchy is based in Sacramento, CA.
Observer editor Thames would not answer News Photographer magazine's question about whether Schneider was fired or resigned, calling it "a personnel matter." A source close to the Schneider story told News Photographer magazine that a directive to fire Schneider "came down from McClatchy corporate" where they were "already taking heat that week" for el Nuevo Herald's fake prostitution photo.
