Only a few days ago, we called out The Sunday Times for using the following photo to illustrate a story on Iran:
The photo above was a doctored version of the one below, created by Iran’s Republican Guard for propaganda purposes and to cover up a misfiring missile. All of this had been exposed at the time the photo was taken in 2008 causing AFP to retract it.
Read the full details of the case here.
We asked why The Sunday Times had republished an already retracted and doctored Iranian photo. This was the response:
This success comes hot on the heels of The Independent’s removal of a staged photo that HonestReporting also exposed in the past week.
Photo bias and Fauxtography is a serious issue, as highlighted by our in-depth Shattered Lens study.
That both The Sunday Times and Independent have chosen to quietly replace the photos without any acknowledgment of their original errors is telling.
HonestReporting will continue to expose this form of media bias and we thank our readers for taking action and getting results.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
