Photo editing and lying

Images are essential parts of news stories. Well, part of any story, I should say.

However, images, in this case photographs, in news stories are the most important because they are telling what happened during an event or at a location where many other were not present at a given time.

A huge debate in the media industry with photography is whether or not edited photos, or "photoshopped" images, should be used.

In my opinion, I believe they should NEVER be used. If something is photoshopped, even if it is as simple as moving a golf ball around in a shot of someone golfing, it is should be considered false reporting and lying.

For a picture to be able to "tell a thousand words" if needs to be pure. Not be a picture that has something added or subtracted to get that thousand word limit.

In terms of using photoshop for editing photos for this project, I find it very difficult. I'm not a graphically inclined person and don't have the understanding or know-how to edit or touch-up a photo.

The above is a photo from the 3/30/10 PG after a person fell or jumped to their death from the Mellon building downtown. I really like the photo, despite the consequences of the fall.