Reuters Yanks Doctored Photograph
By ELIANA JOHNSON - Special to the Sun
August 7, 2006
Reuters withdrew a photograph of Beirut after an Israeli air attack on the city yesterday, saying it was digitally altered by one of its freelance photographers. Buildings were cloned, and smoke was distorted in order to create the appearance of darker smoke than was actually present.
The caption on the manipulated photo read, "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs."
The existence of the doctored image was first reported by the proprietor of the Little Green Footballs Weblog, Charles Johnson. On Saturday, Mr. Johnson, a full-time Web designer, wrote that the photograph exhibited "blatant evidence of manipulation." He cited the "repeating patterns in the smoke," which he said were "almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop ‘clone' tool to add more smoke to the image."
Mr. Johnson also called attention to the "cloned buildings" in the photograph and concluded that the photograph was manipulated. "It's so incredibly obvious … there's really no question about it," Mr. Johnson said.
The news wire immediately withdrew the photograph. In a statement accompanying its "picture kill," Reuters said, "Photo editing software was improperly used on this image." It issued a corrected version.
The photographer who supplied the picture, Adnan Hajj, has worked for Reuters on a freelance basis since 1993. Mr. Hajj "denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," Reuters said.
The news wire has suspended Mr. Hajj pending an internal inquiry. "This represents a serious breach of Reuters standards, and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," Reuters said.
Mr. Johnson and other Web commentators have expressed surprise that an image that appeared so obviously doctored to many non-professional photographers had made it through Reuters's editing process.
Mr. Hajj, whose war photographs continue to be displayed on the Reuters Web site, supplied a number of contentious pictures from the Israeli raid on the city of Qana, including an image in which a rescue worker is seen carrying a dead child. Bloggers, including Mr. Johnson, called the time stamp on that photograph and others into question. Nonetheless, Reuters's head of public relations, Moira Whittle, said that Reuters's investigation will be confined to the single Beirut photograph.
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