AP Suspends DoD Over Altered US Army Photo

djupedal notes a story up at the BBC about the Associated Press's suspension of the use of Department of Defense photos after a photo of General Ann Dunwoody was found to have been altered (before and after comparison). "The Pentagon has become embroiled in a row after the US Army released a photo of a general to the media which was found to have been digitally altered. Ann Dunwoody was shown in front of the US flag but it later emerged that this background had been added. The Associated Press news agency subsequently suspended the use of US Department of Defense photos. 'For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image,' said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography."

Comments

Re:Anti-Military

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it just as equality points to the anti-reality bias of the military.

Re:My eyes, they burn!

[schon]

the Photoshop artist made it that sharp and natural looking, it was an incredible job.

Don't tell me, let me guess:

You thought the CGI spaceships in Babylon5 were realistic and natural looking too, right? :)

Re:For $DEITYs sake

[Mattcelt]

"It is about the integrity of the Associated Press, they have to be strict otherwise people would be calling their photos into question the whole time."

.

...instead of just calling into question the integrity of their reporting, you mean?

Re:The US and US flags

[Culture20]

But I also find the obsession in the US with flags [...] as rather tasteless, rather low-brow.Duh, me Tarzan, me light fire, me wave flag.

Duh, me English, me not have patriotism. Me not see difference between wave flag and light flag on fire.
And I'm not going anon because I'm disgusted that something so Trollish is modded +5 Insightful, and I want this response to be read (for a few minutes until this comment is modded -1 Troll like both it and parent should be).

Re:So what was he *really* standing in front of?

[CAIMLAS]

Well, it appears to be a political barrier. I recall several dozen instances over the last couple years of AP and Reuters photojournalists and/or editors altering photos of the fighting in Israel and Iraq.

For instance:

AP, Reuters, etc. alters photos of Lebanon war

There's a lot more out there of this kind of thing. If it's not altered photographs, it's lying captions or inaccurate information in the articles when it comes to "political" topics which

Which is more dishonest: using photographs which have been altered to improve the appearance of the subject (such as a media headshot as this photo is) or changing something which matters? Or, for that matter, favoring ugly, angry, or stupid looking photos of politicians your organization has ideological differences with, while using favorable photography of those you prefer?

Plenty of evidence there of the AP behaving badly - not just "using" altered photos, but seemingly encouraging it when it suits their political agenda. (In the above cases, that agenda appears to be "destroy Israel".)

The reason they make such a big deal about something like this general's photo is (at least) two fold:

1) They want to provide a smoke screen for when they make photo alterations themselves/use altered photos from their journalists unknowingly.
2) They want to penalize the military (due to ideological differences, apparently)

The AP hasn't been a serious, honest news organization to any significant degree since shortly after World War II. Or, if you prefer not using moral platitudes, they were at least not attacking their own culture and country(s).

The AP, or any other news organization for that matter, taking the Army to task for this is beyond asinine, given their recent (past 10-years) record.