Reuters Editor: Photog Was Not Trying to 'Make a Statement' in Altered Image(Reuters Fauxtography)

NEW YORK Gary Hershorn, a photo editor for Reuters, explained today why the news agency withdrew two altered photos, and then hundreds of others by the same photographer, earlier this week – and also described Reuter’s policy on Photoshopping images.

Hershorn, whose title is news pictures editor for North America, said he did not believe the freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj—now dismissed by the agency—made his changes for political effect. "I believe he was trying to take a picture and make it better rather than trying to take a picture and make a statement," Hershorn told National Public Radio in an interview aired today.

That doctored picture showed thick, black smoke rising over buildings in Beirut after an Israeli airstrike, while the original had less smoke and a lighter tone overall. Bloggers had posted observations that it looked like a Photoshop “cloning” tool was used.

The second photo showed an Israeli jet releasing three flares – while the original photo showed one flare.

Referring to the smoke photo, Hershorn told NPR, "This one slipped through the system. It just came in. A photo editor looked at it and coded it and sent it to our clients."

He explained, "a photographer is never allowed to change content. Reuters has zero tolerance to doctoring photos this way. You can't add information; you can't take away things."

Later, at a Reuters blog site, Hershorn went into technical details about the standards:

“News photographers routinely process images using Adobe Photoshop software. But there has been a basic premise in the world of photojournalism that what was allowed in making prints in the pre-digital days of darkrooms is all that is acceptable today.

“Back in the days of the darkroom, we used very basic tools to develop prints. In black and white printing, the contrast of a picture was controlled by a paper’s grade. The higher the number of the paper, the higher the contrast. In the wire agency darkooms I’ve worked in, we typically used grades 3,4 and 5. We allowed ‘dodge and burn’ to lighten or darken areas. A dodge tool was made by taping a small piece of cardboard the size of a quarter onto a paper clip. A burn tool was a piece of cardboard the size of an 8×10 sheet of paper with a hole in the center.

“If a print had dust spots caused by a dirty negative, we used Spotone, a photographic paint that was dabbed onto a print with a very fine paint brush to eliminate the unsightly marks. One other tool that was allowed when printing color pictures was changing color balance. This was done by placing filters between the light source of the enlarger and the paper that the image was being printed on.

“When we moved to scanning negatives and then to shooting digital, we began using Photoshop. This program allows us to do the same things we did in the darkroom. Changes in contrast, dodging and burning and color balance are now done with software.

“The most controversial tool in Photoshop that we use is the cloning tool. The only accepted use of this tool is to clear dust from the image. We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to using the cloning tool to change content, and by that we mean removing something that exists in a photo, moving or replicating it or adding to a photo.

“The tools we use in Photoshop are levels, curves and saturation for changing contrasts; and, color balance to bring the image back to the way the natural eye would see the color….Photoshop is a highly sophisticated image manipulation program. We use only a tiny part of its potential capability to format our pictures, crop and size them and balance the tone and colour. For us it is a presentational tool. The rules are – no additions or deletions, no misleading the viewer by manipulation of the tonal and color balance to disguise elements of an image or to change the context.

“Photoshop is a powerful image processing program with many more tools to help photographers produce the best quality image they can for the type of photography they do. There is not a Photoshop program for use by news photographers and another for advertising, where image-changing is tolerated. What we in the news photo community need to regulate is what tools are used for photojournalism and what are not.”

If its so common then is lets back check everybody at Reuters...huh? Sounds so familiar with his other crabbing excuses.
I wonder if this note was real or if the White House just chose to ignore it?

Reuters Explains Photo Of Bush Bathroom Note

September 15, 2005
By Daryl Lang Don't blame the photographer.

That's the message from Gary Hershorn, a picture editor for Reuters, about the photo yesterday that shows President George W. Bush writing an all-too-human note during a UN meeting.

Bush is shown writing: "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible."

The photo, which quickly became fodder for blogs and e-mails among friends, was taken by Rick Wilking, a contract photographer based in Denver who recently covered the flooding in New Orleans.

Hershorn, Reuters' news editor for pictures for the Americas, says he's responsible for zooming in on the note and deciding to transmit the photo to Reuters clients. He says Wilking didn't know what the note said when he shot the picture.

"I'm so adamant that Rick has nothing to do with this. He was just the guy who pushed the button," Hershorn says.

In response to the attention the photo is getting, Reuters' spokeswoman in London released a two-sentence statement about the picture: "The photographer and editors on this story were looking for other angles in their coverage of this event, something that went beyond the stock pictures of talking heads that these kind of forums usually offer. This picture certainly does that."

So how did the picture happen?

According to Hershorn, Wilking was one of several photographers covering the United Nations Security Council meeting between about 11 and noon yesterday. He was part of a pool stationed on a balcony that faced Bush's back; a group of White House photographers was on a balcony facing the president.

Wilking shot about 200 images and sent two memory cards to the press room at the U.N., where Hershorn was working. Hershorn looked at the images on a computer and initially decided not to send any of them.

But a few hours later, he started to wonder about a note that Bush was seen writing in three of the pictures. Out of curiosity, he zoomed in to see if he could read it.

Once he saw what it said, Hershorn decided the note was interesting and worth publishing. The white parts of the picture were overexposed, so a Reuters processor used Photoshop to burn down the note. This is a standard practice for news photos, Hershorn says, and the picture was not manipulated in any other way.

Around 4:30 p.m., Reuters transmitted two versions of the photo, including one that was tightly cropped around the note and Bush's hand.

The caption says that Bush was writing the note to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice; Hershorn says Wilking saw Bush write the note and hand the note to Rice.

Hershorn says heads of state seldom attend Security Council meetings, and it's possible that Bush was simply asking his secretary of state what the proper protocol was to be excused.

Online, some accused Reuters, and the media in general, of being insulting or juvenile. A letter writer to Editor & Publisher wrote, "You ought to all be ashamed of yourselves for this stupid trivia and childish focus."

It's unclear how widely the picture was published; Hershorn says The (Toronto) Globe and Mail published it but he wasn't sure of any other outlets. Hershorn says he decided to transmit the picture because it was interesting.

"There was no malicious intent," he says. "That's not what we do."

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"Fauxtography" alert: NYTimes and USNews By Michelle Malkin · August 08, 2006 08:58 PM

"Fauxtography" alert: NYTimes and USNews
By Michelle Malkin · August 08, 2006 08:58 PM