An award-winning LA Times photographer is fired for altering a news photo. It took a while to notice, but once I did, the fraud was obvious. The man with the red bandanna in the lower left corner is duplicated in part just in fromt of the soldier’s leg. One might argue that the alteration only improves the composition, while leaving the image’s meaning intact. Of course we only know this because we have seen the two originals from which the altered photo was derived. But beware; the real deceptions in this war, which I feel are already well underway, will distort the truth grotesquely, not slightly, and will do so with virtually undetectable sophistication. If I felt that Brian Walski’s minor transgression was the worst lie to come out of this war, then I would be greatly relieved.
We do nothing about people who commit war crimes, yet we fire a reporter for retouching a photo. What’s wrong with this picture?