There was an uproar a while back about the media in Malaysia altering press pictures to make them more attractive or slightly change the meaning/context by removing/adding people or merging two pictures.

It also happens to big shot AP photographers and many other press agencies, there is a full gallery that shows the extent of the manipulation and the stories surrounding them. And it’s been happening for a long time.

Like this for example:

Trotsky…now you see him, now you don’t.

And this LA Times pictures which turned out to be a composite of two pictures to ‘improve the composition’.

In most of these cases the photographers were fired. I believe this is rightly so, in the case of media photography or photojournalism, you are taking the scene, the reality, what occurred, it’s not down to artistic interpretation or manipulation.

Source: News.com