The photo was taken of the president Wednesday as he sat in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. According to an article published by the PDN Newswire Thursday, the photo was snapped by Reuters contract photographer Rick Wilking and shows Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reading, "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?"
PDN Newswire spoke with one of Reuters' picture editors - Gary Hershorn, who explained that sections of the photo were overexposed so a Reuters processor used the Photoshop technique to "burn down the note." Hershorn told PDN Newswire that the photo was not manipulated in any way, but that it was standard practice for such news photos to be enhanced.
That explanation would appear to create problems with the policy enforced by Jim Bourg, the Washington editor in charge of news pictures. He was asked by Cybercast News Service Thursday afternoon about Internet blog speculation that the Reuters photo might have been doctored in the computer program Photoshop.
"No, absolutely not," Bourg said. "We have corporate rules against that and anybody who did that would be, would be fired immediately ..."
Reuters maintains "very, very strong policies and rules against any doctoring of our photos," Bourg said, "and all of the people involved with the photographer who shot the picture and the editors who, who chose it and actually transmitted it are very, very long-term employees of Reuters who we trust implicitly and we have absolutely no doubt at all about the authenticity of the photo."
A telephone call to the White House, seeking comment about Reuters' decision to publish the enhanced photo of the president writing the note, was not returned before this article was published.
The incident has reminded some people of the CBS "60 Minutes" story in September of 2004 that alleged President Bush shirked his duty while with the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s. However, the documents used in the "60 Minutes" story and published on the CBS News website, turned out to be fraudulent. The fallout from the episode resulted in the forced resignations of several CBS News staffers and the hastened departure of CBS News anchorman Dan Rather, who had also anchored the "60 Minutes" story.
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