If you haven't been reading the blogs over the weekend, you missed a serious blow-up at the Reuters news agency. (Michelle Malkin has a helpful, link-filled post here.) One of Reuters' freelance photographers in Lebanon submitted at least two photos to the news agency, which then sent them out over the wires, that were Photoshopped to convey more damage and destruction than was actually occurring.

The photographer claimed that his Photoshopping was a mistake and a result of him trying to remove dust from the images. It's a lame excuse which rightfully didn't fly with Reuters, which has fired him, but made me think that Reuters might want to require its Middle East photographers to use Olympus cameras.

All of the photographer's photos -- more than 900 in all -- have been removed from Reuters database. No word on whether Reuters will credit the account of papers that unwittingly used the photographs.

While Reuters says that it is investigating all of the photographer's photos, it also claims that it discovered the second doctored photo in this review. As far as I can tell from my reading, it was a blogger who first spotted the second doctored photo too. This leaves me unsure about whether Reuters is taking this issue seriously, or will just be leaving the issue to bloggers to try and figure out.