Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see what the big deal is. It is not like he fundamentally changed what the picture showed, he just cleaned it up. It seems to me there have been bigger sins by news photogs.
I agree; it’s not as if what he did changed the meaning of the photo, or that he was pursuing some kind of agenda. It was like airbrushing out a candy wrapper or something.
You’re spot on. That’s the pretense of ethics we see there, to give them cover when they lie in areas that really matter. It’s like the ACLU every once in a while supporting a conservative cause.
This could have been handled with a simple correction at the bottom of their website and a slap on the wrist. Nobody would have cared one iota about it.