When is it appropriate for news organizations to edit photographs?

A recent article in The New York Times implies that The Economist was in the wrong when they edited a photo of President Obama for the cover of their June 19th issue. The cover shows the President, apparently alone, looking toward the ground with off-shore oil drills in the distance. The headline is “Obama v BP,” subhead: “The damage beyond the spill.” As the NYT blog article shows, the original Reuters photo included two additional people, who have either been cropped or Photoshopped out of the cover photo.

I remember seeing this cover and thinking Obama looked depressed, ashamed…maybe defeated. Turns out he’s looking downward (probably) so that he can more easily listen to someone much shorter than him. But of course, all of this is open to interpretation. Regardless, it seems to me that reputable news organizations should avoid crossing a line when it comes to edits like these. Seems like that line could be made a bit less blurry by creating a decision tree with three simple questions, like below (click for a larger version)

It’s not fool-proof, of course. In fact, flexibility within limits is one of its benefits. Here are my answers—debatable as they are—for the Economist cover photo in question:

(1) Could the edit fundamentally change the viewer’s perception of what the picture conveys?

Yes. And not even for any politically touchy reasons. Just that in one picture it looks like he’s with other people, maybe listening or talking and in the other it looks like he’s alone, maybe staring at his feet or hanging his head. That’s a change in perceived meaning. Straightforward?

(2) Is the edit likely to be mistaken for reality (as opposed to satire, for example)?

Yes. The picture looks real.

(3) Was no attempt made to mitigate this perception within the same publication (i.e., acknowledgement that the photo was edited and an explanation of why)?

Yes, no attempt was made. At least not that I know of. And the response from the Economist editor in the NYT blog article makes it seem as if no explanation was provided.

That puts it in “not ok” land, as far as I’m concerned, and the editor’s contention that “I asked for [the other people] to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story.” is irrelevant. In this case, I don’t think it’s all that big of a deal (the fact that it’s showing up on this blog is proof of how trivial it is, in fact). But if someone isn’t implementing a somewhat more systematic, rules-based way of determining what’s allowed, I worry about a slippery slope…