Digital Manipulation at the Toledo Blade: worst than expected
Yep, Allan Detrich saw it coming. He resigned the day after he was suspended pending an internal investigation, probably because he knew he was in trouble. In an article published today, Toledo Blade editor Ron Royhab tells the reader that many photos submitted by Detrich where doctored.
An intensive investigation of Mr. Detrich’s work, conducted by Nate Parsons, The Blade’s director of photography, found that since January of this year, Mr. Detrich submitted 947 photographs for publication, of which 79 had been digitally altered.
(…)
The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery.
Mr. Detrich also submitted two sports photographs in which items were inserted. In one he added a hockey puck and in the other he added a basketball, each hanging in mid-air.
As a photojournalist, Detrich doesn’t exist anymore:
The Blade is removing all of Mr. Detrich’s photographs from toledoblade.com and blocked access to any of his photographs in the newspaper’s archive. Like many other newspapers, The Blade shares its work with the Associated Press, an international news cooperative. On April 6, the AP removed all 50 of Mr. Detrich’s photographs from its archives.
Detrich was really not a nobody. “(he) has won hundreds of newspaper photography awards over the years. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 1998”.
