The Truth? Not Quite

A photojournalist working for the LA Times was fired April 1 immediately after his editors discovered that he had combined two of his Iraqi photographs into one to "improve" the composition.If you look at the above images you can see he took the top two and used them to create the bottom images that is visually striking.

The widely published image, of an armed British soldier and Iraqi civilians under hostile fire in Basra seems to show the soldier gesturing at the civilians – urging them to seek cover – as a standing man holding a young child in his arms seems to look at the soldier imploringly. 

Not surprisingly, it ran Page One, large and above the fold, in the Times, and across all six front-page columns of the Hartford Courant, which, like the LA Times, is a Tribune Company property. 

But the picture is a fake – a computer-generated amalgam of two different photographs, made one after the other.

A 20-year veteran of the news business, Brian Walski was confronted by his editors, confessed, and accepted his summary punishment. He called his action a "complete breakdown in judgment" that was caused in part by the stress of his assignment. [It should be noted, though, that Walski did not just push the wrong button and send the wrong picture in the exhausting heat of the moment. He had to consciously manipulate his two digital pictures in Photoshop – an action requiring both skill and intent. He had to create the separate, faked, image, and – again with intent – transmit it to his editors, saying nothing about the alteration.] 

That fine line between fact and fiction in photojournalism is what really interests me. I think it is clear that although the photograph is striking it didn't occur in real life that moment never took place and the photographer lied.