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.

One of Bombardier's high-speed trains

Interest in HSR in Ottawa has been, shall we say, restrained. Even a small system in Ontario’s Windsor-Quebec City corridor or between Calgary and Edmonton would cost billions to build (special track must be laid on a custom track bed) and maintain (because of the speeds involved, careful track inspection and repair is a neverending task).

Environmentalists love the concept for obvious reasons. And High Speed Rail Canada’s travelling road show earlier this year was arranged with the assistance of municipalities, economic development boards and other groups that are likely to benefit if Canada were to dip its toe into the pool. But not everyone embraces the idea.

As I stated in a newspaper column shortly after the London symposium, I think HSR’s time has come. However, Andrew Coyne, national editor of Maclean’s, expressed the view this week that high-speed rail in Canada is a bad idea — now and for the foreseeable future. The concept, at least as applied to Canada, is “insane,” he says, repeatedly foisted on politicians and the public by people and interests that are “impervious to reality.”

Now comes word that the Ontario Transportation Ministry is about to begin a survey among users of the heavily travelled Highway 401 to get their views on high-speed rail. (This comes a day after the same government promised rebates to people who buy electric cars, which the Toronto Star, at least, says is a questionable scheme.)

Canadian companies such as Bombardier have been building high-speed rail cars and locomotives for European and Asian systems for years. There’s just no market for them in North America. And according to the Canadian Steel Producers Association, there are currently no manufacturers of steel rails in Canada.

But the public debate over whether Canada should get on track toward the driving of a new “last spike” on a high-speed rail plan is a timely and welcome one.