You bet it takes a close look. So close that I'd bet someone ratted the guy out.
Walski probably wanted to take out the image of the guy in white in photo 2 who seems to be crawling up the soldier's butt. He probably couldn't crop the guy out sufficiently (cropping being a form of photo editing technology that is OK because it's been around a long time).
There are, to my knowledge, few industry-wide editorial restrictions re reprinting images sent by third parties (often PR firms), over whom editors have no control.
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 13:18:04 -0500
>[This captures the idiocy of American journalism nicely - they
>publish and broadcast endless reams and streams of bullshit every
>day, but publish a doctored photo that tells no real lie - scandal!
>The photos and editor's note are at
><http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ednote_blurb.blurb>.]
>
>
>Wall Street Journal - April 2, 2003
>
>War Photo Doctored in Field
>Shows New Ease of Technology
>
>By MICHAEL J. MCCARTHY
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>A front-page Iraqi war photo in the Los Angeles Times on Monday had
>some eagle-eyed readers doing double-takes.
>
>And Wednesday, the nation's fourth-largest newspaper published an
>extraordinary editor's note, saying it had fired a staff photographer
>for electronically doctoring the photo, a battlefield shot whose main
>image was a British soldier, arm outstretched, gesturing to seated
>Iraqi civilians.
>
>After the photo appeared in three wide columns on the front page
>Monday, the editor's note said Wednesday "it was noticed that several
>civilians in the background appear twice." A close look reveals that
>images of certain people, squatting on the ground, show up in the
>photo just to the left -- and right -- of the soldier's legs.
>
>The Los Angeles Times said it reached Brian Walski, a photographer
>for the paper since 1998, by phone in southern Iraq, and he admitted
>using his computer to splice together two photos, taken moments
>apart, to "improve the composition." A photo spread inside the paper
>Wednesday showed the two actual photos and the "altered photo," which
>mixed elements of the first two, which the paper initially published
>on Monday.
>
>Fashion magazines have long touched up photos, and there have been
>periodic photo blow-ups in the past, as when National Geographic
>magazine moved a pyramid in a cover shot in the early 1980s and Time
>magazine subsequently darkened a mug shot of O.J. Simpson on its
>cover.
>
>But today's digital technology makes it very easy to doctor photos,
>not just by photo editors but even by camera-toting journalists
>working in the field. Programs like Microsoft's Picture It and
>Adobe's Photoshop can be loaded onto a laptop, and they allow even
>amateurs to retouch this and resize that.
>
>Photojournalists were stunned that a breaking news photo was
>electronically doctored. "If you can't believe what you see,
>everything is suspect," says Dirck Halstead, a former White House
>photographer for Time magazine and now a professor of photojournalism
>at the University of Texas in Austin. "There was a great deal of
>soul-searching by editors and photographers," following the pyramid
>and O.J. revelations, among others, he says. "And it was firmly
>established that any manipulation beyond what could be done in the
>dark room isn't permissible."
>
>"This is a huge embarrassment to the industry," says John Long, a
>staff photographer for the Hartford Courant, which also carried the
>doctored photo on its front page. Like the Los Angeles Times, the
>Courant is owned by Tribune Co. It, too, subsequently carried the
>editor's note and the photo-essay showing the original photos that
>had been manipulated.
>
>Mr. Long, who is also ethics chair of the National Press
>Photographers Association, has collected examples of altered photos
>over the years as part of a videotaped speech which the association
>circulates. It's called "Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography."
>As for the Iraq photo, Mr. Long says someone on the copy desk at the
>Hartford paper spotted "repeating people" after it had been
>published, and the paper alerted the Los Angeles Times.
>
>The caption under the original photo in the paper said, "Warning: A
>British soldier manning the Azubayr Bridge orders fleeing Basra
>residents to hit the dirt as Iraqi forces opened fire."
>
>In the editor's note, the Los Angeles Times said Mr. Walski used his
>computer to combine the left side of one photo and the right side of
>a second one. Some residents on the left side of the blended photo,
>it added, are visible twice. "Unless you examine the photo in detail,
>it's not really apparent," a spokeswoman for the paper said. She said
>John Carroll, editorof the Los Angeles Times, was flying
>cross-country Wednesday and not immediately available for comment.
>
>The paper also said in the note its policy forbids altering the
>content of news photographs. Because of that violation, it said Mr.
>Walski was dismissed. Mr. Walski didn't respond to e-mails seeking
>comment, and the paper wouldn't provide his phone number.
>
>Pondering the digital deception, Mr. Long and other photojournalists
>were crestfallen. "This sort of thing damages the credibility of all
>of us," he says. "Once you've lost your trust, you might as well be
>selling aluminum siding."
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