Miguel Tovar, an Associated Press freelancer working in Argentina, took pictures of a group of children playing soccer in El Algarrobal and, in one of the pictures, he decided to clone dust from one part of the picture to another so as to hide his own shadow in the picture. When AP found out, it immediately dropped him and removed the pictures from all AP photo archives.
In a memo, Santiago Lyon, AP Director of Photography, called it “a case of deliberate and misleading photo manipulation by a freelancer on assignment for the AP. […] we have severed all relations with Tovar and removed him from the assignment. […] He will not work for the AP again in any capacity. In addition, we have removed all of his images from AP Images, our commercial photo licensing division, and its website.”
Read the article and view the picture at: poynter.
