Katie Couric Photo Doctored!

I hate fakery in photojournalism as much as anyone, but I think the legions of bloggers now on the lookout for examples of doctored pictures may be going too far. The latest scandal erupted when Brian Stelter of TVNewser discovered that CBS had shaved a few pounds off of anchor-to-be Katie Couric in a recently released PR photo.

Is this another example of the  end of photojournalism as we know it? I don't think so. It's a PR photo, folks. Katie Couric, though beloved by millions, is a TV personality. A lot of who people who will tune into her nightly broadcast on CBS  in September will be less interested in the news content of the program than in her wardrobe. TV journalists wear makeup—which in its own way is a distortion of the truth.

This case of photo doctoring is simply not in the same category as the fakery done by Reuter's photographer Adnan Hajj, who manipulated a photo of the effects of Israeli bombing in Lebanon to make his picture more dramatic, thus distorting an actual event. Bloggers, if you can't come up with something better than this, just lay off of photography for a while.—David Schonauer