Reporting Guidelines
Guideline No. 220 (issued June 1998; amended and re-issued February 2010)

Digital alteration of images

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 use of significantly altered or enhanced images in magazines has also become more frequent, with complaints to the Press Council of significantly altered images or the blending of multiple images being used in a way that misleads readers.

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 in the same edition 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, so that none is misled as to the provenance of the image. 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 accurately describing the significant alteration of a picture or the creation of a montage of different images would normally be sufficient for a publication to meet its ethical requirements.

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