What is your policy on photo editing?

A great photo for a news story tells the whole story without words to communicate the truth through the eye of the photojournalist. Our photos show real people, real places, and real emotions that together instantly engage the reader. Photos should help the reader understand what is happening and why it matters. The best photos also include context to help inform us, telling us what was happening at that moment that was central to the story.

This is why, at the Free Press, we never alter photographs in the editing process other than some basic toning and cropping. We never remove content from an image, instead we’ll work hard on the scene to capture a photograph that contributes to our storytelling by repositioning ourselves and our cameras, as though we’re editing our photos in real time.

The end result is an image that should look as it appeared in real life. Over-toning or filtering an image is a false representation of the event, and something we never do. We need to be the trustworthy source of news, both written and visual.

We never set up or contrive news photos. Instead we try to capture the event authentically to communicate to our readers exactly what was happening without interfering. The only times we might set up a photo are when we’re taking portraits of people or asking them to demonstrate what they’re working on or what they’re hoping to achieve, such as an artist painting in their studio or a student working on their science project.

Using photographs produced by artificial intelligence (AI) goes against everything we do as photojournalists. Our job is to observe, record and document reality, not invent or embellish it. News photographers and editors follow ethical guidelines that determine what is published. They are responsible for making sure every photo is truthful, respectful, free from bias and not misleading in how it tells the story.

Each photo used in a news story will include the name of the photojournalist who captured the image. This reinforces the credibility of the photo, the story it is telling, and the publication it appears in.