I will keep this short because so many people that know so much more about the subject have already weighed in, including Detrich himself. Hearing about the sheer number of doctored photos that Detrich not only turned in, but that ran, reminded me of a comment that SJSU photojournalism student Neal Waters made in an ethics panel we had last September.

We had, of course, discussed the doctored Reuters Lebanon photograph as well as the LA Times Iraq photograph. Neal wondered, with the growing technical capabilities of each edition of Photoshop, how many altered photographs make it to print because the photographer is smart enough not to clone smoke so obviously or clone a man into the same photograph twice?