Photoshop useful for Hezbollah Propaganda and MSM

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/08/08/photo-alter-beirut.html

Altered Beirut photos raise ethics questions
Last Updated Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:04:55 EDT
CBC Arts

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The Reuters News Agency has withdrawn more than 900 images from its database taken by Adnan Hajj, one of its freelance photographers based in Beirut.

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.

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 claiming 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.