lol can you believe this?

Photographer Fired for Altering Picture

The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 2, 2003; 9:59 AM

The Los Angeles Times said Wednesday it fired a photographer for altering a front page photo of a British soldier and a group of Iraqi civilians.

In an editor's note in Wednesday editions, the Times said photographer Brian Walski acknowledged in a phone call from Iraq that he had used a computer to combine elements of two photos to improve the composition.

Journalism ethics forbid changing the content of news photographs, and it is specifically barred in the newspaper's policy.

The two photos, taken moments apart, showed a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to protect themselves from possible Iraqi fire on the outskirts of Basra. Only after the altered photo appeared Monday did editors notice that some civilians in the background appeared twice, the Times said.

Messages left early Wednesday for two Times representatives were not immediately returned.

All three photos - the two originals and the altered photo - were published by the Times on Wednesday.

Walski had been with the Times since 1998

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I seen the first one published. It looked like the soldier had the gun pointed at the man holding a child. The un-manipulated photo had the soldier telling them to stay down and the gun pointed away.

How far will some people go to warp this war into something it is not?

Ask the Bush administration.

do you think this is ok? in a major newspaper?

The Bush administration is a government. Not the news friend

That seems to make it both fair and legal.

Ask the Bush administration.</font>[/QUOTE]Hm, perhaps a bit of slanted interpretation? You decide. I already have. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

It seems reasonable enough to me that anyone would be fired for doing something that was against his employers policy.

<font color=skyblue> Are you just posting for numbers and rank? The government does not control the press...so why bother posting your personal dislike for Bush on this thread? Since we are talking about the picture and the reason behind it's editing, keep your anti-Bush talk reserved for the appropriate threads. </font>

If you edit a photograph and publish it in a newspaper without informing the public that the image is false, then the action is unethical. I think that the Los Angeles Times acted correctly in dismissing this 'reporter'.

Newspapers are not supposed to 'make up' the news - and the photographer's actions could have seriously damaged the reputation of the newspaper if it had chosen to retain him.