Fox News website removes digitally altered photos

SEATTLE — Fox News has removed digitally altered photos from its website after The Seattle Times on Friday noted misleading images used in the network’s coverage about a Seattle neighborhood that’s become a protest center against police brutality and racial injustice.

As of Saturday, Fox News included an editor’s note posted at the top of at least three stories on its website covering the protest zone, saying it replaced a “home page photo collage” because it “did not clearly delineate between these images” and that it “mistakenly” included a St. Paul, Minnesota, photo in a slideshow about Seattle.

The Seattle Times reports Fox News’ website featured at least two photos on Friday that inserted an image of a man standing with a military-style rifle, and that there were no disclaimers on how they were manipulated when featured on the network’s website for most of the day Friday.

The Seattle Times said Fox took down the photos after the newspaper inquired, and a Fox News spokeswoman acknowledged the issue in a statement.

“We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront,” the Fox statement read in part.

The standards of journalism require photo illustrations to be clearly marked.

The gunman image also was inserted into a different June 10 Getty Images photo showing a sign from the protest zone that reads: “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE CAP HILL.”

The gunman and sign photos were taken by Seattle freelance photographer David Ryder, who then distributed the photo through Getty Images.

“It is definitely Photoshopped,” Ryder told The Seattle Times. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”