With police shielding Rafferty from public view (more for his own safety than concerns about his image), it was a tough assignment for any news photographer to get a clear image of the accused. Several tried, with varying degrees of success. The Woodstock Sentinel Review‘s Elliot Ferguson captured Rafferty’s fleeting appearance between courthouse and police van. London Free Press reporter Randy Richmond got a photo that landed on the next morning’s page A1.

Perhaps the most impressive shot, however, was that of freelance shooter Dave Chidley, hired by The Canadian Press to cover the court appearance. Chidley, who planned to review the assignment and his technique today with his news photography students in both the print journalism and broadcast journalism programs at Conestoga College, said the assignment was a challenge. The resulting photo, used in newspapers and websites across the country, was captured by a combination of great anticipatory timing and a motor drive that shot 10 frames per second. Only two of those frames revealed Rafferty’s face, Chidley said.

The stunning loss to Russia aside, the annual IIHF tournament routinely provides some of the most watchable hockey of the year. Now . . . back to the Leafs.

And as is so often the case, the Globe and Mail‘s Roy MacGregor provides some context with a splendid piece on winning, losing and gaining perspective.

Update: MacGregor followed up with a compelling piece on Canadian Junior goalie Mark Visentin, after the loss, in the Globe’s editions of Saturday, Jan. 8. Read it here.

The digital manipulation by The Economist for its cover, left, of a news photo taken by Reuters photojournalist Larry Downing, right, is a recent example of the ethical challenges posed by imaging technologies.

Since the advent of digital photography in the early 1990s, there have been hundreds of cases of manipulation of news photographs by newspapers and magazines for editorial, artistic and cosmetic purposes. The practice, of course, preceded Photoshop and its competitors: Airbrushing, touchups and other forms of darkroom sleight-of-hand have been in use for decades, especially at magazines. But the arrival of digital photography software in the newspaper industry and at the consumer level introduced a new set of ethical questions within journalism.

The current debate over the use of an image of President Barack Obama at the Gulf of Mexico, with an oil platform in the background, is only the latest. In it, a cover version of the Reuters photo, manipulated by The Economist, has local resident Charlotte Randolph digitally scrubbed away, while another figure in the original shot, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, was cropped out.

An article yesterday by Jeremy W. Peters in The New York Times cogently presents the arguments for and against such treatment. It’ll be a good case study for discussion at my journalism ethics class at the University of Western Ontario tonight. Reuters, meanwhile, has issued a statement saying the edit at The Economist violated its policy.

For a good summation of the view commonly held in newsrooms, both in Canada and the U.S., see this essay by photographer Frank Van Riper in The Washington Post.

Lieutenant William Calley Jr. became the central figure of the My Lai massacre

Anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall the infamous My Lai massacre. It was a seminal event in the history of that war because of its effect on public support for U.S. involvement there. Millions of Americans who, until My Lai, had supported or wavered in their support for the war turned against it — so stunned were they by the atrocities committed by American troops.

The destruction of the village and the massacre of its Vietnamese inhabitants occurred on March 16, 1968. Although the official U.S. tally puts number of dead at 347, other estimates of the death toll exceed 500. Most were women, children and elderly people. Many were raped, tortured and mutilated. The soldier in charge of the U.S. Army platoon that invaded the village was Lieutenant William Calley Jr.

The events of My Lai may have escaped media and public attention entirely if not for the fact that several U.S. soldiers were so shocked and disturbed by the conduct of their own troops that they wrote letters to President Richard Nixon, the joint chiefs of staff, officials at the Pentagon and others about the incident. The horrors of the My Lai massacre surfaced publicly more than a year later, when, despite official secrecy about the letters, independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story on Nov. 12, 1969. In the months that followed, My Lai remained a major story in newspapers, radio and TV. Calley and more than two dozen of his men were charged, but only the lieutenant was eventually convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison, but served only three and a half years under house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Ga.

Since then, Calley had remained silent about My Lai. Until yesterday.

At a Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Ga., he offered an apology. Read the Associated Press story here; the Telegraph story is here.

A footnote: The My Lai massacre occurred one month after Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett filed a story, on Feb. 7, 1968, in which Arnett reported, “‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a U.S. major says.” The town in question that day was a Vietnamese provincial capital, Ben Tre. Since then, this type of statement has become known as “Ben Tre logic.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

The cover of the July 27, 2009, issue of Maclean's

The cover illustration on the July 27 issue of Maclean’s, constructed from a series of manipulated images, certainly is, well, provocative.

It features a less-than-flattering image of Toronto Mayor David Miller stuffed into an aluminum garbage can, banana peel adorning his scalp, with raccoons foraging around the rotting detritus at the container’s bottom.

And lest the reader think the current four-week-old garbage strike is the only reason “Toronto stinks,” the accompanying display type offers some additional clarity: “Skyrocketing costs, soaring taxes. Now a summer garbage strike. How Canada’s biggest city got itself into this mess.”

Ironically, the colourful coverage by Canada’s national newsmagazine comes on the heels of Miller’s efforts to push back against negative publicity generated by a recent newsfeature in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which the paper put the Canadian city at the top of its “World Travel Watch,” citing the unpleasantness for travellers posed by the lengthy municipal workers strike in Canada’s largest city. (Windsor got sideswiped in that piece, too.)

In response, Miller appeared on CNN to try to counter the article’s impact and reassure visitors. On Friday, the mayor held a press conference to underline his confidence in the “resilience” of Torontonians.

The Maclean’s illustration certainly took me aback in that, at first blush, it appeared strangely pro-labour. It’s certainly the kind of cover that would engage my journalism students in lengthy debate — about photo illustration generally, but also about the kind of editorial statement being made here and whether it meets, or should have to meet, journalistic chestnuts about fairness and balance.

When Maclean’s posts a link to the feature story inside, I’ll post it here. Meanwhile, what’s your view?