He was a well respected photojournalist. His pictures have won prizes.
His pictures were altered, according to a recent investigation by the staff of Toledo Blade.
Sunday's Toledo Blade story on the investigation of former Blade photographer Allan Detrich, one of its top photojournalists, reveals the emergence of a pattern of digitally altered images by the staffer.
Since January, according to the Blade, 79 out of 947 pictures submitted by Detrich had been digitally altered. This means that for every 12 pictures Detrich turned in for publication one of them had something added or removed. The investigation began after the National Press Photographers Association notified The Blade over concerns about a what appeared to be a digitally altered image.
According to The Blade's Vice President and Executive Editor, Ron Royhab, "The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery."
Photo Credit: The Toledo Blade
This incident raises a thorny question for photojournalism as an occupation, which prides itself on covering events honestly.
How many other photojournalists at newspapers around the country are also altering content?
Is this a trend or a fluke?
The downside of new technologies is that people will use them in any way they think may improve their position in life. Behaviors associated with older technologies -- those that made cheating and manipulating more difficult -- are radically changing not only the way we make pictures but also the way we look at them.
Royhab's explanation in The Blade reveals the angst that comes with acknowledging how one person's actions can impact an entire community:
Honesty is the fundamental value in journalism.
When a Blade reporter or photographer covers a news event, the newspaper and its readers expect an accurate record of the event. Reporters and editors are not allowed to change quotes or alter events to make them more dramatic. Photographers and photo editors cannot digitally alter the content in the frame of a photograph to make the image more powerful or artistic.
A photographer altering the content of images an be looked at in the same light as when a reporter plagiarizes a content for a story, with the understanding that the former is lying and the latter stealing. Whatever, the reason for doing so, the costs in terms of a newspaper's reputation and credibility are severely damaging.