Unlike Charles Johnson, I don't have a background in graphic design but could still tell at a glance that the image in question had been doctored. No, butchered. Those repeated patterns in the smoke clouds are so clearly fake that even Blind Freddy could see this picture was iffy.

Frankly, how could anyone describing themselves as a photographer submit work touched as poorly as this? It's just not believable. The photo has been manipulated so badly, so obviously and anyone with half a brain can see the effects -- Reuters and sundry other news editors excepted -- that I wonder if the whole thing isn't a beat up and that Mr Hajj, freelance photographer at large, doesn't exist. If he does, then reasons why the image was syndicated should be examined. There are layers of fishiness here and it stinks of conspiracy and media manipulation. (Yeah yeah, "The first casualty when war comes is truth.")

Let's not think that photoshopping news photographs is rare. About a fortnight ago there was a picture of skiers riding a chairlift at Mt Buller on the front page of The Age which had been touched to change tones of the the grey sky. Shame was there were lots of white bits left where patches of sky had been framed by chair frames. If this mistake could be seen in colour newsprint it must have stood out like a sore thumb on a good monitor. Oops, another rushed job. If they photoshop little things like that at The Age I bet they do a lot more that you wouldn't even notice unless you were in the photographic trade.

Oh, the irony: the camera never lies. The first time I heard of Photoshop by an artist in the technological vanguard many moons ago she told me, "It's wonderful! You can change history!" Now it's being used to change the way history is made.

Photographs are just a representation of reality anyway. If you take them as being truth, as they were when the technology first came to use in the art world, you're only bound to be deceived.

Just look at the cover of any magazine. The graphics department regularly, in fact, almost always, photoshop vases, curtains, even whole lounge room ensembles into the supposed reality of "Better Homes and Gardens". Or the models on your FHM and Ralph magazines; in one famous case they "built" an entire model for their front cover from a paparazzi's headshot.

The images in the news are there to support a story, not be the story. In this case, what's the difference between manipulating the image and manipulating the editorial 'slant'?