JERUSALEM (JTA) — A blog has criticized the Reuters news agency for cropping the knives of activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla from photos it distributed to newspapers.
The blood of a wounded Israel soldier also was omitted from the two photographs first questioned by the Little Green Footballs blog.
"That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo," the blogger wrote. "Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision."
Reuters said it is standard operating procedure to crop photos at the margins, and replaced the cropped images with the original ones after it was brought to the agency’s attention.
The photos were released to news services and other media by the Turkish daily Hurriyet. Other news services, such as the Associated Press, did not crop the photos.
