By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent , and ReutersThe Reuters news agency admitted Sunday that it had published a doctored photograph of Beirut after an Israel Air Force strike on Saturday morning.
In the original image, thin smoke can be seen rising over the Lebanese capital, but in the second photograph, thick, black smoke can be seen billowing over the buildings.
Reuters said that it has dropped Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese photographer who submitted the image. The organization also said that it is investigating the incident.
Reuters said it has strict standards of accuracy that bar the manipulation of images in ways that mislead the viewer.
"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.
"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," Whittle said in a statement issued in London.
Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff freelance, or contributing photographer, from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.
He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30, have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media's coverage of the Middle East conflict.
Claims that the photograph had been doctored were published on a number of blogs, which rushed to prove that the image had been retouched in using the Photoshop program.
All photographs taken for Reuters around the world are sent to Singapore, where they undergo certain editorial processes before being distributed to the agency's many clients. On Sunday, Reuters removed the retouched picture from its catalogue and replaced it with the original.
