More questions about alleged 'staged' photos

It noted that Donald Winslow at the National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA), following up a post at The New York Times Lens blog, detailed the circumstances surrounding a photo story distributed last September by Reuters. Published after the Assad government’s gas attack in Ghouta, the images depicted the heroic story of Issa, a 10-year-old boy in Aleppo who worked ten hours a day with his father in a munitions factory for the opposition Free Syrian Army. “Or so we’re supposed to believe,” BagNews said.

The photo reproduced here is one of the pictures from the series.

Reuters denied the picture story was staged, saying: “We have thoroughly investigated the claims made by the Times and NPPA and established to our satisfaction that the pictures were not staged. Setting up pictures is a firing offense, strictly against policy. It is the responsibility of Reuters’ chief photographers, photo desks in the region and the filing desk in Singapore to question every picture we serve to clients where a setup is suspected. Reuters will not use any photographer, freelance or staff, who is found to have passed off a set-up picture as a spontaneous one.”

It added: “The photos of boy in the factory in Aleppo were not staged. On September 4th, photographer Hamid Khatib was working on a story about factories making munitions and weapons. Hamid visited a number of factories and at one he spotted the child Issa. Reuters thought the story of child worker Issa in a munitions factory was one that we could develop for our photography app and website Wider Image - which features Reuters images expanded into deeper, more contextual stories - so Hamid spent the day with the father and his child on September 7th.”

BagNews said: “If we can count on a few news photos a year being discredited, these allegations not only involve a whole series but a photo story - as you can see from just this small sampling of screen grabs - that achieved wide circulation as well as various accolades.”

It noted that photos from the series even earned recognition, by both The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, in their 2013 Photos of the Year.

BagNews said it spoke to “almost a dozen conflict photographers, editors and reporters” to “crowdsource” a cross-section of analysis. The feedback ranged from the photographic to the mechanical to the social. “To a person, I should add, everyone we spoke to was convinced the photos were staged.” ■