Gaza Burial, World Press Photo 2013: Between ethics and forensics

The controversy surrounding the integrity of Paul Hansen’s award winning World Press Photo of the Year 2013 has moved the debate on ethics and digital images into a new and highly sophisticated technical level. There seems to be no consensus among forensic analyst experts on the question of knowing whether the photograph submitted to 2013 competition is composite or not. In this article, we contend that should ethical principles be preserved from drifting into a set of virtually unlimited technical specifications, the framework for designing and thinking ethical guidelines ruling the use of news images should abandon old conventions and find a new ground where to legitimate photojournalism’s social function.