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News Agency Says Missile-Test Photo Digitally Changed

Posted on: Friday, 11 July 2008, 06:00 CDT

By Andrea Stone

An editor who transmitted an apparently doctored photo of an Iranian missile test published around the world said Thursday the gaffe shows that news organizations must be careful about using government handouts.

"It's a debate we have to have," said Patrick Baz, Middle East photo editor in Cyprus for AFP, a French news agency that distributed the photo. "Technology is going so fast, it's 'Who can you trust?'"

The original photo of three missiles lifting off apparently was altered to add a fourth. He said AFP's Tehran bureau got the four-missile version from Sepahnews.com, the website of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It appeared Wednesday on news websites and in newspapers Thursday. USA TODAY ran the photo with a story that quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying the missile test posed "a real threat."

The New York Times briefly had the photo on its website but not in Thursday's print editions. Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography, said a foreign picture editor, Patrick Witty, warned his editors about the photo Wednesday afternoon.

"Whole sections are cloned, and rather sloppily in some places, too," said McNally, who alerted AFP's Washington bureau.

A search by the French news agency turned up a video on Iranian TV that showed just three missiles rising, Baz said. AFP technical experts in Paris also said the image was manipulated.

The Times' website reported at 9:16 a.m. Thursday on "a missile too many." The item said "the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image."

At 9:33 a.m., AFP sent a correction on its wire saying the handout photo was "apparently digitally altered" to cover up the failure of one missile.

James Brown, an Indiana University journalism professor who is writing a book titled Ethics in the Age of Photoshop, called the four-missile photo "amateurish."

Mohammad Mohammadi, spokesman for Iran's United Nations mission in New York City, said there was no reason to think the photo was altered. He said both versions are on Sepah's website. He did not explain why.

The Associated Press ran a cropped version from the site Thursday showing two missiles rising and a third in its launcher.

"The important thing," Mohammadi said, "was the message of these tests" that shows Iran can defend itself. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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