The BBC reports that Reuters has dropped one of its freelance photographers in Lebanon after discovering that some of his images had been doctored before being sent out on the wires and published worldwide. Interestingly, the report says that bloggers were instrumental in identifying that images had been manipulated.

The news agency Reuters has withdrawn from sale 920 pictures taken by a photographer after finding he had doctored two images taken in Lebanon.

Bloggers first spotted that smoke on Adnan Hajj’s image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike in Beirut appeared to have been made darker.

A Reuters investigation confirmed this and also found two flares had been added to an image of an Israeli jet.

[…]

He described it as a precautionary measure, but said the manipulation undermined trust in Mr Hajj’s entire body of work.

“There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Mr Szlukovenyi said in a statement.

Questions were raised about the accuracy of the image on Sunday in several weblogs - personal online diaries by writers known as “bloggers” - including ones which scrutinise media coverage of the Middle East for bias.

Mr Holmes said Reuters welcomed the growth of weblogs, which had made the media “much more accountable and more transparent”.

Kind of ironic that something like this happens after I ‘v been talking about returning to film. Unfortunately, digital images don’t have quite the same “integrity” as film does. In particular, a negative exists with film that will always be available for comparison with the final scan or print.

Yet, it’s confusing as to why the image of smoke billowing from a cityscape of Beirut needed to be doctored at all. Even changing the brightness and contrast of the image might have been okay, but it looks as though the photographer actually used the cloning tool in Photoshop — and badly at that.

Used wisely it’s a good tool for, for example, airbrushing out specks of dust or scratches on film. But no matter how a Photoshop newbie might be tempted by it, it is not a good tool to use for replicating large areas of a photograph. Because all you can do is take a piece of the picture and reproduce it someplace else, it’s very easy to introduce subtle patterns into a photo, especially in the background, that the eye can pick up on. If somebody overuses the clone stamp tool, you won’t necessarily be able to pinpoint exactly what the problem is, but you’ll know something is off.

By all appearances, it looks like Adnan Hajj used the clone stamp tool about sixty-three zillion times to paint more smoke into the sky above Beirut.

Like I’ve said before, digital photography isn’t perfect, but that’s not to say that image manipulation can’t be done with standard film-based photography. You can still scan an image into a computer for manipulation and during the printing stage, burning in or dodging an image can make it.

However, in the latter case that’s also a matter of art, and one that’s up to the photographer or printer in much the same way as choosing a specific type or grade of photographic paper is. Nevertheless, the negative is always available to compare with the print so that there is no question that the image has been tampered with.

And in many cases, photographers like myself generally tend NOT to crop their images. In fact, it’s almost become a matter of integrity and a personal guarantee that the photograph depicts exactly what the photographer saw in front of them when they pressed the shutter.

However, in the age of Photoshop and the easy creation of digital images combined I’m sure with the demands of photo editors, the matter becomes one of increasing urgency. That is, digital images are now so easy to create, manipulate and disseminate that some trust in the integrity of images has gone.

Incidently, this issue is one of relevance to Armenia. Not only do some local photojournalists stage shots, but I’ve even had myself photographed by one local photographic news agency and superimposed on the background of another image. Of course, in the case of Armenia, I don’t suppose photographers have much understanding of ethics.

Let’s face it, most local journalists and editors don’t, so why should they?

To be fair, though, this story about Reuters shows that it happens elsewhere and it’s probably no surprise to learn that the manufacturers of professional cameras are now building image authentication into their new models. Nikon have done so with their upgrade to the Nikon D2x, for example.

Image Authentication Software (Windows)

With image authentication enabled in the D2Xs’ Set Up menu, RAW, JPEG and TIFF photos taken with the camera can be verified as unaltered in Nikon’s new Image Authentication Software. Image Authentication Software can determine whether the photo itself, as well as GPS location, date/time and most other EXIF metadata stored inside a D2Xs picture file, has been altered. The software is also designed to verify itself, to ascertain whether its own programming code has been tampered with.

In the U.S., Nikon Image Authentication will have a manufacturer’s suggested list price of US$649.95 and an expected street price of US$569.95. It’s slated to ship in July 2006. It will run on Windows 2000/XP systems only, there is no Mac version. It will only run when the included USB dongle is plugged into the host computer.

Nikon Image Authentication Software will not be compatible with files from earlier Nikon digital SLRs.

Even so, the combined cost of a pro-level Nikon D2xs body, the image authentication software, plus a wide-angle and telephoto zoom is hefty — over $8,000. Still, Reuters and others can afford that kind of dosh. And while the rest of us can’t, it’s all the more reason for me to stick with film for the moment.

In fact, LA-based photographer Ara Oshagan said the same to me before he left Armenia just the other day. We both concluded that the cost of professional level digital equipment is still ridiculously high when we can get amazing quality from film.

Anyway, bizarre, and the story has already made it’s way onto the pages of Wikipedia. There’s also extensive coverage on other blogs such as Powerline, Gateway Pundit, Pajamas Media, and I’m sure many others.