Did you see this pathetic piece on Rodney Adler in yesterday’s Tele ? They obviously had a slow news or picture day, so someone cut out Adler’s head and stuck in on a chef’s photo with a pretty weak yarn about how his lawyers had written to correctional services asking for a chef’s job for him.

Yeah they put “digitally altered image” below the shot, but even a seasoned old cynic such as me took a couple of minutes to work it out. You really can’t believe that a so-called “news” paper would do such a thing.

CRIKEY: This is a good point. Press Council rules only require that digitally altered images be labelled as such, but the small print that appears at the bottom of photos like this isn’t enough to alert many readers to what’s really going on. Tricky pictures like these present another problem for newspapers because the taint of invention cannot be quarantined from the real news pictures, making the whole paper appear much less credible. Then again, from the point of view of a creative tabloid like The Tele, maybe that’s not such a problem? After all, with page three pictures like this, new editor David Penberthy can’t be accused of lacking ideas.