Decision ‘08

Reuters Does The Right Thing (Eventually)

After even more evidence of doctored photos emerged, Reuters has finally withdrawn all photographs taken by the Lebanese freelancer responsible:

Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.

Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work. “There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Szlukovenyi 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.” Removing the images from the Reuters database excludes them from future sale. Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after it found that a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings. An immediate enquiry began into Hajj’s other work. It established on Monday that a photograph of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had also been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three. “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,” Szlukovenyi said. “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.” The news and information agency announced the decision in an advisory note to its photo service subscribers. The note also said Reuters had tightened editing procedures for photographs from the conflict and apologised for the case.

Pajamas is all over it…

2 Responses to “Reuters Does The Right Thing (Eventually)”

1 fatman Says:
August 8th, 2006 at 4:00 am
I’m not going to claim this as an original idea - I saw it suggested somewhere else - but what Reuters should do is post all of Hajj’s photographs on a separate site and let the blogosphere have a whack at finding more photoshopped images. That might go a long way toward convincing people that they’re really trying to clean house.
2 The Right Nation Says:
August 8th, 2006 at 10:32 am
ReutersGate/4

Secondo Google News, sono appena 3 gli organi italiani d’informazione che hanno dato notizia del ReutersGate nelle loro edizioni online: la stessa Reuters (ci mancherebbe altro…); Repubblica (con un articoletto pieno di inesattezze) e Agenzia Radic…