Reporting Guidelines
General Press Release No. 220 (June 1998)

Alteration of Pictures

The Australian Press Council occasionally receives complaints that pictures accompanying news or feature articles have been altered in some way. This practice is not new but changes in technology have made it easier to carry out. These techniques have also made recognition of alterations more difficult.

The Council believes that a publication that uses a significantly altered picture that purports to illustrate the news (whether it be on the cover or in the body of the publication) should disclose in the picture caption or in a prominent position the fact of that alteration. The form of the disclosure can be left to the editor of the publication to determine but it should be sufficient to bring the fact of the alteration to the notice of readers. If this is done properly, the Council would not normally entertain a complaint about the alteration.

In adjudicating a complaint (Adjudication No. 679) some years ago, the Council, in ruling on the use of file photographs to illustrate a story, made the comment, "Readers' rights to be informed accurately could be served by greater care in the wording of captions to such photos taken from library files or, at the very least, by a notation, such as 'file photo', to describe their nature more accurately."

The Council believes a notation of similar wording which accurately describes the significant alteration of a picture or the creation of a montage of different images would normally be sufficient for a newspaper to meet its ethical requirements.

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