I wish more photojournalism looked like this...

It's a great photo. How did the photographer get the blur effect but manage to capture her face clearly? The father and the child are both in motion. So if the photographer panned the camera with their walk, the father would also appear clearly. Why is the father blurred? Any ideas?

http://www.puntoini.net/wp-content/files/mgb_05_presse_capa06.jpg

Also, this is pretty on point all the way around, specif. the last two paragraphs.

http://www.slate.com/id/2145277/

Anyway, the consensus of Capa's biographers and every photographic historian I've read is that Falling Soldier is real. The claim to the contrary rests on the word of an elderly writer fourty years after the fact, who gave conflicting statements about the circumstances.

An essay on the evidence compiled in Capa's favor - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capa_r.html

i hardly know where to start here.

Actually a family member claimed her nephew (?) died at the border so it could have happened. I dunno. Does it really matter? No. Not in my opinion.

In both situations, although very different, the girl was either just about to be, or was, being rescued. The photo takes 1 second to take. The result can be action spurring.

Why has no one mentioned photoshop yet? It's not just for sticking George Bush's face on a cow's body.

Being an editor-in-chief myself - in The Netherlands, I'm not sure what controversies you refere to - I know from experience that some photographers consider photoshop simply as an extra part of their toolkit, like setting the flash, filter, lense etc.
Now, if I'd learn that above photo has been indeed altered, it would be dissapointing, not to say disturbing (especially given it's theme). But I know that's just my view, which isn't shared by a lot of other people.

You don't need photoshop to alter "reality." Photography has always been about manipulating images.

I disagree. Photography hasn't always been about manipulation, photography in it's purest form is it's own manipulation. But it's a manipulation we've all learned to understand. Taking a black&white picture of something is manipulation in it's own, simply because we see in color, but a black&white photo isn't considered being a manipulated version of 'reality' (I'm having a hard time using that 'reality'-word, as I'm not quite sure what reality is, or if we'd agree on what 'reality' is). We also adepted to the fact that, with a photo, we can look at something in 'freeze-frame'. In 'reality', we can't do this, but that doesn't make photography manipulation. Photoshop does.

However, photoshop (or equivalent) WILL have been used to alter this picture between camera and press/web.

If nothing else it's been re-sized and subsequently, if the person who re-sized it was doing their job properly, sharpened.

It's 337x260 pixels which is more square than the usual camera native aspect ratio, so I think it's been cropped to help emphasise the subject. [337x260 is about 80k pixels which is too small to even come directly out of a camera phone.]

It looks over-saturated and very contrasty so either it's come out of a really cheap camera (which will emphasise those to make the picture look subjectively better) or those properties have been tweaked.

It would also be easy to burn in the face of the girl (or is it dodge, I can never remember) to make it clearer (I'm not say that has been done, just that it might easily have been).

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All of that could just be considered as prepping it for viewing, nothing untoward.

Photoshop is a legitimate tool for the most part, and used in the ways of old darkroom techniques (dodging/burning/cropping/color correcting) I doubt anyone would have a problem. When you get into heavy alteration of the scene, journalistic ethics wouldn't allow it, just as they wouldn't accept airbrushing 50 years ago.

Such as? I've not heard of any. Can you be specific.

I agree with you Gerard about there being no objective reality, but this
"But it's a manipulation we've all learned to understand." is over-optimistic, you understand but a lot of people don't.

If you check PJ guidelines (and also PJ contest guidelines - the White House Press Association awards, etc.), you'll find that's pretty much standard. You can Photoshop for dust removal, color correction, dodging/burning - but not additions, subtractions or major alterations.

"...to take upon you the task of being as 'true' as possible..."

The most truthful photos can be the ones that have been altered/manipulated a lot though. Just pointing a camera at something and pressing the button will just show you what it looked like to a camera. If you're a good photographer you should be able to show what a human there might have experienced.

Even if I agreed with your premise - heavily manipulating the 'reality' of the event with new images or blurring is hardly necessary in conveying 'truth' - "Show[ing] you what it looked like to a camera" is pretty much the idea behind 99% of photojournalism. If you classify someone like Cartier-Bresson or Eugene Richards or Sebastiao Salgado as a photojournalist rather than simply a photographer or a documentarian, the field gets wider - but in no case can I think of a situation where photojournalists at large, PJ orgs, contests, newspaper or magazines would consider significant alterations to be acceptable.

If you want to alter the scene to present a greater 'truth,' excellent - but it ain't photojournalism. You can't be Hunter S. Thompson on the crime beat at your local paper, either.

ihttp://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer2/20122005/856456/LBN20_wa(1).jpg

reuters owns up to a rogue photog's photoshop foolery. funny thing is that you can see the repeating pattern quite easily.