Every photograph that you see on a page of a newspaper has been through Photoshop or a similar programme. That does not mean that every image has been altered, but it does mean that every image has been optimised. The primary use of photoshop in publishing newspapers and news magazines is to prepare the picture for the printing process - to get the contrast, colour balance and density of the image right for that publication.
Many photographs get converted from colour to monochrome at this stage and those that stay colour are converted from RGB colours to CMYK to match the printing inks.
The ability to manipulate images has long been a worry for those keen to safeguard the integrity of news photographeric and documentary photography. It has always been there from fake fairies at the bottom of Lewis Carroll's garden via disappearing generals in Stalin's Russia to a few celebrated cases in modern newspapers. Whether it is any more common now than in the past I am not sure, I have yet to be convinced that photographers themselves are altering images - anything that I have personal knowledge of has been done the photo desk staff on newspapers that should know better.
The two cases that I can think of where the message of the picture has been significantly altered both ended up with the picture editors being given formal disciplinary warnings and suffering enormous embarrassment. Another case where the picture editor inserted a beautiful blue sky ended up with them having to apologise to the readers in the form of an open letter. It could be that here in the UK we have a reasonably effective Press Complaints Commission who have sufficient powers to stop it happening, or we are just an honest bunch!
Finding a workable definition of what altering an image actually meant occupied the pages of the photographic and journalistic press right across Europe for months. In the end the consensus decided that cropping and adjustments in line with the black and white printing process (dodging, burning, contrast etc.) were allowable. The addition or removal of anything (other than by cropping) that would change the message or meaning of the image was effectively outlawed, and there was a general (if unsuccessful) movement to try to get manipulated images labelled clearly as such.
The whole subject is complicated by general public awareness of what is possible (they all have PCs with photo manipulation software) and a general assumption that pictures do get doctored. That assumption may be true for fashion, commercial and advertising photography - it has been going on for many years - and there have been countless television documentaries about airbrushing and the glossy women's magazines. On the whole newspapers and serious magazines have neither the stomach or the motivation to engage in image fixing.
Possibly more dangerous is the topic of image captioning. Badly, mischievously or even libelously captioned photographs cause far more damage than people think. A picture of a youth standing on a street corner waiting for a friend on their way to church can so easily be captioned in a way to infer that he is about to commit a crime. This happens all too often and is usually the fault of sub-editors who write the captions that appear on page and of agency staff selling library pictures too hard.
There are photographers whose own personal code of conduct wouldn't let them alter pictures. There are others who might do it if they think they could get away with it. Photographers could change lives by changing the content of a picture, but it isn't happening much (if at all) and it has always been possible anyway.
Don't get me wrong, the danger is there so as an industry we should keep an eye on the subject, but that is all because wide spread abuse of the software isn't happening as far as I can see. It is good to see that so many of the next generation of photographers and news photographers have genuine concerns for the maintenance of ethics and a regard for the good name of our profession. At the moment we are allowed to police ourselves, and if we do a good job that should continue.
