The revelation that a photographer for Reuters used digital editing software — and not very skillfully at that — to add some extra smoke to a battle picture from Lebanon prompted some consternation among photo editors and media critics last week. Among the more common lamentations was the belief that because any kid can “Photoshop” a picture — an invented verb meaning to use a popular computer image-editing program to alter a scene — the “documentary” image as we know it may lose its credibility.

But the notion that a photo that hasn’t been “Photoshopped” is somehow more truthful reveals an almost touching faith in unretouched images — as well as our naïve inclination to blame technology for human ethical failings.

The concept that an image that was just “taken” and not somehow “manipulated” provides a genuine slice of reality is wrongheaded and more than a little dangerous. For example:

• A congressman is giving an impassioned speech. The camera shows him from the chest up standing at a lectern. It is an unretouched, genuine image. Pull back and show the rest of the chamber. There’s hardly anybody there. The speech is being given, as are many speeches in Congress, to an almost empty hall. That is also an unretouched, genuine image. Okay, you tell me — which one is real?
• A candidate for reelection is down in the polls, and it looks as though his campaign is hitting the skids. As he finishes a reasonably upbeat speech in an airport terminal, he walks though a door and takes a breather, slumping a little. A photo snapped at that instant shows him head down, with the upper part of the photo framed by an EXIT sign. In is an unretouched, genuine image. It contrasts sharply with a photo taken during the speech, where the unretouched, genuine photo shows him as forceful and energetic. Alright, which one is real? Which one would you, as a photo editor, choose to accompany the newspaper’s story that the candidate is slumping in the polls?

On the subject of reality, both are real cases — one from an incident when C-SPAN first started to cover Congress and then-speaker of the House Tip O’Neill demanded that the camera be repositioned to show that a Republican’s rousing speech wasn’t really rousing anybody, and the second from wire-service coverage of George H. W. Bush’s unsuccessful campaign for a second term.

Both illustrate the point that unretouched images and reality are not the same thing. There’s no way that we can employ an image to extract a complete, bleeding chunk of reality and hand it to a reader or viewer, whether it’s been “Photoshopped” or not. Images have a grammar and a syntax all their own. They are among the most volatile of intellectual commodities and must be handled with honesty and discretion.

In the aftermath of the Reuters incident, there have been several calls for tighter procedures in the technical screening of photos to ensure they have not been digitally altered. I have received several emails suggesting that the journalism department where I teach add more discussion of the permitted and prohibited uses of photo-editing software.

That’s all well and good. But the focus on the medium rather than the message seems to miss the broader point: Anyone can lie with a camera, even a cheap, old camera and without access to digital technology.

Any discussion of the integrity of the image has to begin and end with fundamental ethics, not with a policy memo on software tweaks.

Given the assumption that reality is not an absolute — that it’s something more along the lines of what comedienne Lily Tomlin described as a “collective hunch” — the images that shape our view of the world need to be framed with honest judgment. People who take them, edit them, and print them need first a firm and flexible grasp of the difference between informing and propagandizing, between reinforcing a story and using a photo to promote an editorial agenda.

My view on the Reuters incident? What the photographer did was dead wrong. Clearly the motive was to make the combat seem more devastating. It changed the context of the photo and materially misled the viewer as to what was happening, a transgression far more damaging that merely trying to make the photo more attractive or compelling. Not only was the attempt dishonest, it was (luckily) clumsy — no more convincing than the Stalin-era paste-and-scissors propaganda photos in which heads were too big for the bodies and the shadows on the faces fell in a different direction than the ones on the shoulders.

But we can’t always count on technical giveaways to spot a doctored photo. We have to be able to put our faith in the integrity of the individual photojournalists and the ethics of the organizations that employ them.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“Accounting matters. The deficit number affects how politicians act. We need a good number so politicians can have a target worth looking at.”

– Harvard University law professor Howell Jackson, a specialist in business law, speaking to USA Today about a discrepancy in government deficit figures. According to the paper, the U.S. government keeps two sets of deficit figures — one touted to the public, the other kept behind the scenes.

The latter set — the one showing an “ominous financial picture” — is the audited statement “produced by the government’s accountants following standard accounting rules,” according to the paper.

According to the sunny publicized forecast, the deficit in 2005 was $318 billion. According to the government’s own audit, the figure is far higher: $760 billion in 2005.

WASHINGTON
President Bush last week launched an international campaign to fight governments run by greedy and corrupt officials, a type of government termed “kleptocracy.”

Bush said that out-of-control government corruption undermines democracy in poor countries and sabotages development, according to a report from the Reuters news agency.

Reuters noted that Bush’s “National Strategy to Internationalize Efforts Against Kleptocracy” comes in the wake of an agreement by the Group of Eight — an organization of the world’s leading industrial nations — to coordinate legal and financial strategies to combat corruption.

“For too long, the culture of corruption has undercut development and good governance and bred criminality and mistrust around the world,” Bush said in a statement. “High-level corruption by senior government officials, or kleptocracy, is a grave and corrosive abuse of power and represents the most invidious type of public corruption. It threatens our national interest and violates our values. It impedes our efforts to promote freedom and democracy, end poverty, and combat international crime and terrorism.

“Kleptocracy is an obstacle to democratic progress, undermines faith in government institutions, and steals prosperity from the people,” Bush said. “Promoting transparent, accountable governance is a critical component of our freedom agenda.”

According to a fact sheet provided by the White House, the global anti-corruption strategy will involve denying entry into the United States for any person engaged in corrupt activities, urging passage of new anti-corruption laws worldwide, prosecuting corrupt officials, and denying them access to world financial systems in order to keep them from laundering money.

The Voice of America reported that during a press conference senior officials from the State, Treasury, and Justice departments declined to identify current world leaders who may be involved in corruption, but a fact sheet issued by the State Department identified former leaders Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Arnoldo Aleman of Nicaragua, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and Alberto Fujimori of Peru as kleptocrats.

SÃO PAULO
An investigative panel in Brazil claims it has uncovered an enormous bribery scandal involving about 10 percent of the National Congress.

BBC São Paulo correspondent Tim Hirsch reported that the panel has recommended the expulsion of three senators and 69 members of the lower Chamber of Deputies — an unprecedented situation even for “a country used to corruption scandals.”

According to a report from UPI, the lawmakers are accused of accepting kickbacks from contractors who wanted to provide ambulances to various municipalities.

Reuters reported that the congressmen are formally charged with embezzlement, influence peddling, and corruption, and are expected to face a congressional ethics committee hearing. Most are members of parties aligned with the current administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The investigation is expected to refocus attention on corruption issues as Brazil’s October election approaches, the Dow Jones news service reported. The current government is still recovering from a campaign finance scandal last year that resulted in the expulsion of two federal lawmakers and the subsequent resignations of three others.

NEW YORK
A photographer who apparently digitally altered photos of the conflict in Lebanon — in one instance, adding smoke to the scene of an attack — was fired by the Reuters news agency last week.

Adnan Hajj, a freelance photographer based in the Middle East who has sold his work to Reuters and the Associated Press, purportedly used photo-manipulation software to copy images of smoke from one section of the photo to other parts of the scene, making the final picture more vivid and implying greater destruction, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

Reuters pulled the photo in question and more than 900 others by Hajj from its database, according to the Monitor.

Bloggers discovered and spread word of the alteration with such speed that the retraction of the photo and the firing of the photographer occurred within a day.

The incident took on political overtones, according to an analysis from the Toronto Star, when various bloggers and websites used the photo as alleged evidence of an anti-Israel agenda on the part of mainstream news media.

The Little Green Footballs blog was prominent in the outing. It is the same site that originally cast doubt on ultimately discredited documents that CBS claimed showed that President Bush had received preferential treatment during his National Guard service, CNET reported.

The fact that computer images can be easily manipulated by off-the-shelf computer programs has made readers more skeptical of what they see and heightened the anxiety of photo editors, according to reports from the New York Times.

“They doubt the media because they understand what digital photography is,” Torry Bruno, the associate managing editor for photography at the Chicago Tribune, told the Times. “Everyone who plays with that knows what can be done.”

Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which examines ethical issues in media, told ABC News that the incidents should be a “clarion call” to media companies to improve their procedures “in vetting images properly.”

NEW ORLEANS
The largest professional association of psychologists, which had faced criticism for its decision a year ago to allow psychologists to assist in military interrogations of terror suspects, last week went on record as opposing torture but left its interrogation policy intact.

At its convention in New Orleans, the American Psychological Association (APA) adopted a resolution saying it “unequivocally condemns any involvement by psychologists in torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This APA policy applies to all psychologists in all settings,” according to a statement from the organization.

In addition, the APA’s statement said psychologists are duty-bound to intervene and stop acts of torture or abuse, and said it was “the ethical obligation of all psychologists to report such behavior to appropriate authorities.”

But the organization stopped short of reversing its existing policy affirming that it is ethical for psychologists to assist in military interrogations. The Associated Press reported that critics are troubled by incidents in which mental heath specialists are reported to have helped interrogators refine coercive techniques to extract information, including exploiting detainees’ phobias.

“There is no way for the APA to be involved in those interrogations without becoming complicit in torture,” said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, who was among the speakers at this week’s convention, according to the AP.

Advocates of having psychologists assist in interrogations maintain that the presence of a psychologist can protect detainees. Frank Farley, a psychology professor and former APA president, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that anyone who believes interrogations are not necessary is “naïve,” and “having a person who subscribes to APA ethics in the room at the time can only be a good thing.”

The Houston Chronicle reported that the American Medical Association has adopted what many view as a stronger policy against participation in interrogation of prisoners.

LONDON
The decision by Scottish medical authorities to allow the use of a promising new medication to treat a leading cause of blindness has sparked ethical debate in the United Kingdom because authorities who will determine whether the medication is released in England and Wales won’t consider the drug for a year — meaning, say critics, that 20,000 people may go blind because of delays by a group they characterize as a “rationing” watchdog.

The London Daily Mail reports that the controversy centers around the drug Macugen, which is designed to treat a specific type of macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over 60.

While doctors are allowed to prescribe the drug, it is very expensive and the lack of official endorsement by medical panels in England and Wales is expected to mean that the National Health System (NHS) bureaucracies will not cover the cost of the treatment, the BBC reported.

“We are very aware of the financial pressures that the NHS is under but, as the [Scottish medical panel] has recognized, if we set the cost of treatment against the cost of blindness it is, in fact, very good value for money, as it actually saves people’s sight,” a spokesman for the Royal National Institute for the Blind told the Glasgow Evening News.

Macugen was approved for use in the United States in 2004, the Houston Chronicle reported.

LONDON
A recent decision by a British regulatory agency allowing couples undergoing fertility treatments to screen their embryos for susceptibility to cancer has many questioning the ethics of the procedure, according to press reports.

United Press International notes that the test, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, allows screening for a wide variety of illnesses and predispositions. Susceptibility to certain cancers was recently added to the list of permitted screenings.

But according to the Associated Press, some ethicists maintain that the technology has outpaced society’s ability to regulate it.

“Right now, we can only screen for a handful of conditions,” said George Annas, chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at Boston University. “But in the future, we’re going to be able to screen for literally everything that has a genetic component. And at that point, there may be no embryos that are deemed fit for life.”

In the current dilemma, much of the controversy centers on the fact that the newly allowed testing screens for diseases that may or may not develop, such as breast, ovarian, and colon cancer. Also, such diseases may be preventable or, in the lifetime of a human born from the embryo, easily curable.

The Irish Examiner noted that there are no such regulations on screening in the United States, and reported that some medical authorities, worried that couples may routinely cross borders in search of the easiest venue in which to ascertain the health of an embryo, have called for universal legal and ethical standards.

COLUMBUS, Ohio
Ohio Republican congressman Bob Ney, swept up in the vortex of corruption scandals swirling around disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, last week withdrew from his campaign for reelection.

The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, reported that Ney said he is innocent of any wrongdoing and had left the race to protect his family from scrutiny and harassment.

“I must think of them first, and I can no longer put them through this ordeal,” he said.

Ney is currently under investigation for his ties to Abramoff, a lobbyist who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is cooperating with the FBI in a series of probes related to bribery allegations, according to the Washington Post.

While House Democrats were quick to pounce on Ney’s resignation as additional evidence of the Republican “culture of corruption” they are touting as their campaign theme, GOP leaders say Ney’s resignation increases the odds of their party keeping the heavily Republican district, USA Today reported.

Meanwhile, the situation is muddied by Ohio election laws, which contain what is dubbed a “sore loser” clause that prevents someone who loses a primary from running in the general election. The candidate Ney favors as his successor, Ohio state senator Joy Padgett, lost a bid for lieutenant governor in May’s Ohio primary, which may bring her under the provision, according to a report from the Hill, a newspaper covering Congress.

The issue will likely end up in court, according to a report from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

NEW YORK
An attempt to support academic research into Web searching went very, very wrong last week as America Online posted search topics of hundreds of thousands of users — only to find that bloggers, reporters, and armchair Internet detectives were able to trace back the searches and identify some individuals.

AOL immediately apologized and vowed to be more careful, but as USA Today reported, the incident has raised ethical questions about the use of such data, in particular whether search companies should store such requests. While firms such as AOL and Google argue that storing requests allows users to recall previous searches and helps search engines to improve their products, USA Today noted that the incident demonstrates that privacy safeguards are lacking.

New York Times technology reporter Tom Zeller, Jr., observed that the incident could be the Exxon Valdez of the information industries — analogous to the 1989 oil spill that that “became the rallying cry for the environmental movement.”

Zeller noted that search data is a “hot commodity” in the Internet marketplace because it tells a great deal about consumer interests and preferences, but that “as it stands now, little with regard to search queries is private. No laws clearly place search requests off-limits to advertisers, law enforcement agencies or academic researchers, beyond the terms that companies set themselves.”

CNET News reported that the accidental release of the data may strengthen the hand of legislators who want to clamp down on the type and amount of information Internet companies can collect. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) cited the incident in his call for expansive regulation that would require all website operators to regularly scrub personal information from their databanks.

According to a report from the Christian Science Monitor, AOL could face lawsuits from users who contend that their privacy was violated by the release of the data. The Monitor quoted analyst Paul Saffo, who advised that companies think twice about enriching themselves on consumer data.

“You may discover that private information is the new dioxin or the new asbestos,” he told the Monitor. “This is a vast liability.”

From Harris Interactive®:

“Despite being widely reported in the media that the U.S. and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, surprisingly; more U.S. adults (50 percent) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq. This is an increase from 36 percent in February 2005.

“Overall, attitudes toward the war in Iraq are negative, and less than half of the U.S. population believes that the threat of terrorism has been reduced. U.S. adults are not confident that Iraq’s government will eventually become stable, and many think the war in Iraq is continuing to hurt respect for the U.S. around the world. Most people do not think that U.S. troops will be out of Iraq in the next two years….

“Specifically, the survey finds:

• “By 56 to 37 percent, a majority is not confident that Iraq will be successful in developing a stable and reasonably democratic government. This has improved slightly from November 2005, when a larger 61 to 32 majority felt this way.
• “Furthermore, a large 68 to 28 majority thinks the United States is less respected around the world as a result of the invasion in Iraq. This is worse from a year ago in June 2005 when, by 62 to 33, a majority felt the U.S. was less respected.

“The public’s views on Iraq have not changed substantially in the past year:

• “A majority (56 percent) thinks that spending huge sums of money to invade and occupy Iraq has meant that a lot less money has been available to protect the United States against another terrorist attack. This has decreased from April 2005 when 62 percent agreed with this sentiment.
• “Still, six in 10 (61 percent) adults agree (59 percent in April 2005) that invading and occupying Iraq has motivated more Islamic terrorists to attack the United States.
• “By 58 to 41 percent, a clear majority does not think that invading Iraq has helped to reduce the threat of another terrorist attack against the United States. This is similar to the 61 to 39 percent majority that felt this way in April 2005.

“U.S. adults believe that the following are true about the war in Iraq:

• “Seventy-two percent believe that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein (slightly down from February 2005 when 76 percent said this was true).
• “Just over half (55 percent) think history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq (down substantially from 64 percent in February 2005).
• “Sixty-four percent say it is true that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (the same as 64 percent in February 2005).”

“You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

– Abraham Lincoln (16th U.S. president, 1809-1865)