Could you comment a bit more on the investigation of the other photos? Were all the 900 photos by the sacked stringer investigated? What level of detail was used? Are they available for others to look at? I’m (happily) surprised that no other ones from the stringer were found to be compromised. But it doesn’t quite make (human) sense. You would think that a person who lies as a habit would have done it a bit more. Thanks in advance for any additional explanation!

Thanks for the many responses to the posting on our photo rules. Some of them raised important issues that I wanted to deal with.

Reuters is a global organisation and we regard it as a strength that we work with local photographers worldwide not a weakness. Local staff work and learn first under the close guidance of experienced senior international photographers. Some of those local photographers who started out as freelancers after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe are now working as Regional Chief Photographers with great effectiveness.

All photographers who work for Reuters, whether they are staff or freelance and whatever their nationality, are made very aware that staging news photographs is a serious professional breach that can lead to dismissal. Our guidelines have been reinforced to make that even clearer and are public. In the course of our investigations, we reviewed a number of photographs of the conflict in Lebanon that readers alleged had been staged or that we felt required further research. This was an exhaustive process and we found no conclusive evidence that our photographers had set up the scene. However, we did conclude that in some cases the way those photographs were captioned was incomplete and could be construed as misleading. For that reason, we have substantially strengthened our guidelines on captioning, particularly in cases when photographers are escorted into areas by one or other parties to a conflict or in countries whose governments restrict the work of the media. Readers have a right to know whether photographers are truly free to work independently. We believe that we are setting a new standard for the industry in this regard.

Some of our captions also did not make clear that the subjects in them were acting in response to the very presence of news photographers. We expect our photographers to work sensitively and unobtrusively, using long lenses when possible, so that their presence does not influence behaviors. However, when it does happen and there is a compelling news reason to publish the photograph we will make it very clear in the caption that the behavior shown is a result of the media’s presence.

Internally, when we have questions about an image, our editors will go back to the photographer and ask for the raw images in their original sequence so we can be sure that reality has not been distorted. Readers also sometimes contact us to ask whether a photograph has been staged or Photoshopped. Sometimes an image can look too perfect or it can appear fabricated even when it is not. The reason is often that a camera lens does not “see” reality and respond to light in the same way as the human eye. We treat every inquiry seriously and investigate.

Finally, staging photographs is of course an issue in news photography, just as plagiarism and fabrication are issues in news reporting.But the problem of staging is not new, it is not limited to any particular region of the world or story and it is certainly not restricted to Reuters. Some of the most iconic news photographs of history have been attacked as staged or misleading, among them the image of Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War two, taken by an American photographer, or the photograph of a Vietnamese girl running naked from a napalm attack, taken by a Vietnamese photographer in 1972.

To those who call the bogus images trivial,’ I say you totally miss the boat. I also see you as someone who might, given the opportunity, clone the heck out of an image.

On a different note: I’m mystified as to why you continue to let partisan groups use your images for free on their websites. They frequently edit the pictures in complete contravention of your guidelines, and almost always misrepresent what is on the picture to suit their agenda. What’s more, some of these groups are run as for-profit companies. When are you going to stop people exploiting your images, and by extension your photographers, for political ends?

The bigger you are the bigger the target and so it is with Reuters. When you are a global entity (and the eyes and ears of those of us who will likely never visit the news sites), the burden of care in reporting is huge.
When the photos were originally exposed as dramatically altered, you failed the critical test. When you are constantly in the place of earning trust you have to take the charge seriously and deal with it. You did deal with it eventually and I commend you for acting. But the unpleasant PR you are receiving now was entirely due to a failure to take the accusations seriously in the beginning.
The danger of being big is thinking that big means right. Truth is right and that must be the goal.
The comment from William P speaks of those who are “grasping onto the biggest flaw they can find.” I really think he misses the point. It is because the loyal readers of Reuters, who can almost never check facts, witnessed the discovery of an egregious manipulation of the data treated so cavalierly. I guess I am asking that the daily briefing of the staff include a healthy reminder of humility and the need to listen to others.

REUTERS IS KILLING ITSELF
Reuters is defensive and hostile, trying to constrain this issue to 2 photographs, when biased and or untruthful reporting rightly threatens the foundations of the entire fourth estate. I am a medical researcher who has done hundreds of media interviews, and I have yet to see a single accurate media report from these interviews. I have yet to witness Reuters reportage on any topic of my expertise that was fully accurate. Fact abuse and truth pollution prevails in the MSM. Truth does not have a political orientation, but the fourth estate crisis deepens because the first estate (in democracies, the people) can now directly access source documents, eyewitness reports, and myriad instances of MSM photographers faking photographs and stories. Reuters moral turpitude, wobbly high-grounding, aimless reasoning, and constant whining, betray the permanent lack of direction, the frustrated malaise of a dying culture that refuses to change. The public has never wanted misleading or false reportage, they want unbiased, clearly presented factual information. So long as Reuters fails to satisfy this demand, so will their abandonment accelerate.

I support Reuters’ decisions to tighten the policies on photograph editing. However, and more importantly, I should note that the backlash from the one instance of editing was seriously asymmetrical. It was used as a tool to smear a respectable news source for an oversight that affected almost nothing.

While I respect Reuters for being so open and apologetic about the incident, I think that the transgression (adding smoke for dramatic effect) was nothing worthy of the level of backlash that was seen. And it certainly did not detract from Reuters’ status as a fantastic news source.

You did not tarnish your reputations or condemn yourselves as being a source of ‘questionable’ stories. The people who are saying these things simply enjoy grasping onto the biggest flaw they can find. Please continue to demonstrate the highest journalistic standards as you have done, and bear in mind that most of us are aware that this episode was trivial from the start. The fact that you have responded with more vigor than even your detractors speaks volumes about both you and them.

You have specified quite clearly that digital enhancement will be closely watched, but you fail to address the much more important and damaging issue of staged and stage-managed photos. The use of local stringers who have attachments if not outright loyalties towards one side in a conflict has damaged Reuters more than the Photoshopping of two images. Until Reuters addresses that problem you cannot expect knowledgeable people to take a Reuters photo or story at face value.

Altered pictures are only part of the problem. If you have stringers who are working for the insurrection or Global Jihad, and if they continue to stage photos for propaganda reasons, your efforts on the technical side will be completely useless. Until you have the financial strength to send unbiased journalists to trouble spots — obviously not the case now — you will continue to be a source of very questionable material.

I’m sorry, the mud isn’t off your reputation yet.

David - Interesting and valid set of guidelines, but there’s another insurance step that really would work. I understand the value of speed in distribution of news images (hence, a jpg prepped for publication in the field), but a follow up of the original images in RAW format — the entire sequence of the shoot — to the photo desk would give you good oversight.

It’s extremely difficult to alter a RAW image in the compositional sense (helps in cropping, contrast, overall color balance correction and overall sharpness) and virtually impossible in an entire sequence. The original RAW images would allow the photo desk to see the work right from the camera and make its own judgments on acceptable modification, as well as have a detailed archive (i.e., the entire “roll” and “contacts”).

I’d put myself in the expert class on working with digital images and Photoshop, both in my function of marketing a university and as a hobbyist in native plant photography (www.geoffmehl.com). It’s scary how an image can be altered — especially consolidating elements from different images or removing undesired elements. It’s one thing to do it for advertising/marketing/educational illustration and another to do it for news. As a former newspaper editor, I respect the ethics of the situation. The images you referred to were really, really clumsy efforts.

But even with a slight feed delay from distribution of the breaking image, demanding the original RAW images come to the desk will prevent an enthusiastic field photographer from helping an image along — it makes it too hard to even try faking and assures you of what you’re handling on a tight deadline.

regards
Geoffrey Mehl
Director of Publications
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
gmehl@bloomu.edu