As you may have heard, Reuters has cut a Beirut photographer loose for two cases of digital photo manipulation.
Gawker has one of the photos.
A Beeb editor, Steve Herrman, discusses the issue at the BBC editors' blog. He quotes Phil Coomes, the image editor for the Beeb website, as follows:
"Digital photography has altered the landscape of photojournalism like nothing before it, placing the photographers in total control of their output. All the news agencies have photo ethics policies, many of which are rooted in the days of film. The standard line is that photographers are allowed to use photo manipulation to reproduce that which they could do in the darkroom with conventional film.
"This usually means, colour balance, 'dodging and burning', cropping, touching up any marks from dust on the sensor and perhaps a little sharpening. If we are honest though, an accomplished darkroom technician could do almost anything and there are many historical examples of people being airbrushed from pictures.
"All this sounds fine until you look at the reality - one man’s colour balancing is another's grounds for dismissal.
"By definition a photograph is a crop of reality, it’s what the photojournalist feels is important. But it doesn't equate to the whole truth, and perhaps we just need to accept that."
Can someone remind me who said (words to the effect of): "A photo is accurate. It is not the truth." If one accepts the logic of that statement, then digitally editing a photo to enhance its accuracy should be acceptable. Adding something like more smoke should be out of bounds.
And it was! :)
