Altering an Image

Altering an image can be extremely detrimental to both a newspaper's reputation and a photographer's career. Many do this to make there image better, but others alter a photograph to make it suitable for publication.
For example: if a photograph had a profane word in it, the editor could simply photoshop it out. I am going to use a photo from the Dove World Outreach Center as an example. This photograph does not have profanity, but it does have some writing in the background that could be offensive to some. The trailer in the back says "International Burn a Koran Day 9/11/2010 6PM-9PM."

Pastor Terry Jones walks out of the Dove World Outreach Center to address the media.

There was a major issue in reporting this story because of the unnecessary attention Pastor Terry Jones was getting. An editor might argue they do not want to advertise the time and place of the Koran burning - so they take out this information in the photograph.

This is the same photograph without the information on the Koran burning in the background. (DO NOT PUBLISH)

As you can see, by taking out the information on the Koran burning it alters the photo significantly. While the Pastor is still walking from his church and addressing the media, the lack of information on the trailer doesn't give the reader an immediate sense of what is going on, where the subject is and why he is in the news.
This is a horrible practice in the news media and has been done many times.
Here is another example of photoshopping an image to improve the look of the image for publication.

The Economist removed certain people from this photograph to give a cleaner look to their cover photo.

This has been an issue since the start of newspaper photo publication. A complete history of altered images can be found at this website: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/