Photoshopping and Fucking

There's been an interesting story doing the rounds about how bloggers have exposed a Beirut-based photographer for digitally manipulating his war images. The photographer, Adnan Hajj, turned out to be working for Reuters, and the news agency hastily dismissed him and removed his entire archive of photographs - around 900 images - from their database.

This has been cited as an example of 'citizen journalism' helping to make the media more accountable and transparent. And the National Union of Journalists was prompted to issue a rather lame and belated press release condemning the practice.

Meanwhile, on an email discussion list for editorial photographers, initial discussion centred on how awful the photographer's 'Photoshopping' skills were. Not the fact that a trusted newsgatherer was prepared to distort the truth and, in doing so, prepared to compromise the integrity and reputation of other photographers currently risking their lives in the Lebanon.

But how far was the truth actually distorted? So far we have been presented with evidence that Hajj added some extra plumes of smoke and, possibly, accentuated the extent of damage caused by Israeli bombs to one of his images. It also appears that he might have added a couple of extra flares being fired to a picture of an Israeli fighter jet.

Yet, up to a point, this kind of post-doctoring is common practice. Given the technology to do it, what photographer would not attempt to enhance his images by, for example, brightening colours or making skies appear more dramatic? Furthermore, the staging of news pictures has a long history and is still widespread today. As long as the essence of the story is not misrepresented, what is wrong with a certain amount of interpretation? After all, this is exactly what happens with writers.

If he is guilty as charged, Hajj clearly overstepped the mark. And given the ferocious politics in the Middle East, has been more than a tad foolish (his images really did not need any enhancement to tell the story). But, as wiser voices on the editorial photographers' email list pointed out, the real story is how they got past Reuters' editors. Without proper gatekeepers in place, and given the current proliferation in potentially unreliable citizen contributors, it is no surprise that news organisations are laying themselves open to mauling by politically motivated bloggers.

Hajj has become a scapegoat. Perhaps he will find some solace in cleaning up on all the unauthorised uses of his images around the world. It should amount to a tidy sum in reproduction fees.

That's right bloggers. It's called copyright.