Reuters congratulates themselves on toughening up their photography rules, after being caught publishing at least two blatant fakes. They’ve established to their own satisfaction (and I guess we’re supposed to just accept) that there were only two fake photos.

LONDON (Reuters) - Reuters named a new chief photographer for the Middle East on Thursday and said it had tightened its editing procedures after the publication last year of two photographs that had been digitally altered.

The measures were among several steps announced by David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of the global news and information agency, following an internal investigation that he said had resulted in disciplinary action.

The two photos, both of Israeli military action in Lebanon during the war there last August, were taken by a freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj.

Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj following an initial inquiry soon after bloggers questioned whether the photographs had been digitally altered using Photoshop software. All Hajj’s images were removed from the Reuters Pictures sales database.

“Experienced photo editors and other senior editorial staff went through thousands of images published during the Lebanon conflict,” Schlesinger said in a note posted on the Editors Blog of reuters.com.

“We are satisfied no other images were digitally altered.”

He added: “We are fully satisfied that it was unfortunate human error that led to the inadvertent publication of two rogue photographs. There was absolutely no intention on Reuters part to mislead the public.”

But of course, there’s not a word about the much larger issue that these fauxtographs helped reveal—the endemic and pervasive bias in nearly every article and photo caption Reuters publishes related to the Middle East. Especially in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, Reuters is a wholly-owned tool of terror groups, spreading their propaganda on a daily basis. (And the other major wire services, AP and AFP, are just as bad and worse, respectively.) I am far from satisfied that Reuters has “no intention to mislead the public.”