This lucid statement was driven in part by moral dilemmas such as those discussed in Fineline, a journalism ethics newsletter:

• A reporter for a small weekly hockey publication was pressured to remove a manufacturer’s name from a hockey stick in an image because a competitor was a prime advertiser and threatened the publisher with canceling the account.
• When Ron Olshwanger celebrated his Pulitzer Prize with a Diet Coke, the St. Louis Dispatch ironically digitally removed the Diet Coke can from his celebration photo.

Because many periodicals use altered images for non-news items (food sections, etc.), Fineline suggests such images be labeled composite photo, photographic recreation, or photo dramatization. Fuller explanations are acceptable, as well. But photo illustration, feature photo, and cover photo are unacceptable. And the acceptable qualifications need to be in the image caption, not in back-page credit lines. To its credit, the Norwegian Press clearly labels manipulated images with the letter m inside a circle or the word montage. But this simple approach leaves many problems as well.

The NPPA’s statement of principle came none too early because the Associated Press was in the process of installing its digital image delivery system, Photo Stream, and editing computers, Leaf Picture Desk, in 60 percent of U.S. daily newspapers. At the time, the technology ship was truly docking. Yet two years later, Time magazine published O.J. Simpson’s manipulated image on its cover. This seems truly ironic because Tom Bentkowski, LIFE magazine’s director of design, wrote in 1988, “A photograph that represents an actual situation can never be manipulated in good conscience.”

Tom Bentkowski had previously been Time magazine’s Special Projects manager. His August 20, 1984, issue covered the Olympics. In that issue, John Meyers, Time’s publisher, wrote on page 4:

...TIME has premiered a new system for transmitting color photographs that can reduce the time between shutter snap in the Los Angeles Coliseum and finished picture in TIME’s U.S. printing plants to as little as 6 1/4 hours. Immediately after an important shot, the film was processed and edited, then flown twelve miles by helicopter to Torrance, Calif., where TIME Inc.’s corporate manufacturing and distribution division had installed a scanner to turn the pictures into digital signals. These were beamed by satellite to New York City, where they were reassembled on a video monitor. After review by TIME’s editors, the final pictures were retransmitted to the printing sites. To technical director John Mitchell, the new system is “a significant breakthrough.” It also means that TIME readers can see color photographs in their magazines only 36 hours after a news event.

One of the truly impressive images this process produced was of Mary Decker Slaney lying in agony after Zola Budd bumped her, knocking her down and injuring her in the process. A benevolent Olympic official was futilely attempting to assist her up—page 45 of the August 20, 1984, issue has the full image.

This remarkable image later appeared both on the cover of TIME’s Fall 1989 special edition, titled 150 Years of Photo Journalism, and inside on page 70—four pages after Richard Lacayo’s page 66 observation:

“Now the prospect of computer tinkering threatens to bring a day when the whole enterprise of picture taking will not be so subtly compromised”

(referencing forged authenticity).

A few pages later, the text reads:

“Computer retouching has already become commonplace in the fantasy world of advertising photography. Now many journalists are troubled by the prospect that the practice will creep into the reproduction of news photos. A computer can remake a picture, but only ethical people can draw the ethical line.”

This is all true, but the immense irony is that the Mary Decker Slaney image originally published in 1984 had been digitally edited to remove an unsightly, prominent walkie-talkie antenna. So, Time experienced a slice of its worst fears at its own hand at the new process’s inauguration.

Finally, there is the problem of exterminating mutant variations of images regardless of the process used. One surprising instance occurred in a May 1995 LIFE magazine feature on the famous Kent State National Guard shooting. LIFE unknowingly used a manipulated version of John Filo’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo retrieved from its photo library.

When called to its attention, David Friend, LIFE’s director of photography, personally responded, candidly acknowledging the alteration, clearly stating LIFE was completely unaware the image was altered when it used it and that several other publications had used the image for over 20 years before the airbrush manipulation was eventually noticed.

David Friend concluded his response with the statement:

At no time would LIFE’s photo, art, or production department intentionally alter a news photograph.

David Friend’s full response can be found with an AltaVista search using “John Filo” as the search keyword. At this printing, the text resides at:

http://www.cris.com/~Mppa/ethics.html
http://www.mppa.org/mppa/ethics.html

as well as in an article titled “The Renaissance of Photography”—a Los Angeles SPE Conference keynote address by Pedro Meyer. (Reference http://zonezero.com/ for this article as well as several additional thought-provoking imaging articles.) Clearly, once unleashed, mutant images become truth viruses.