New York Daily News front cover September 8, 2000

haos erupted in the Time magazine photography department on September 8, 2000. "Everyone was asking, where is that photo?" says Gary Roberts, an assistant photo editor at the magazine. "We were all scrambling around and calling everyone we knew."

Margaret O’Connor, photo editor for the New York Times thought to herself, "Oh my God, we missed it."

The photo, a picture of former President Clinton and Cuban leader Fidel Castro shaking hands at the United Nations, appeared on the cover of the morning edition of the Septeber 8 New York Daily News. But the Daily News was the only one of the city’s major publications who ran the picture because, as the staff at Time and The New York Times learned when they read the fine print, the photo had never been taken.

The picture was actually two images blended together. It showed a moment reporters had witnessed but no camera had captured as the leader left a crowded a crowded luncheon. The Daily News had digitally combined photos of two leaders leaning in towards each other.

And it was a big moment. Clinton reportedly shook Castro’s hand during the luncheon—the first ever handshake between a sitting president of the United States and Castro, according to the New York Times.

The picture that ran in The Daily News did` have "photo image" at the bottom of the page, but critics said the picture’s realistic appearance and the photo credit’s small typeface was misleading.

"The print was so tiny, you could hardly see it," Roberts says.

"The whole industry was up in arms about that front page picture," says O’Connor.

"We got caught up in our own world and we are working on this," says Thomas Ruis, a design director at the Daily News. His staff, he says, was not trying to mislead anyone. To them the image was clearly a montage. "Sometimes we think everyone sees things the same way we do," he says.

That’s exactly the problem. Though photographs have been altered manually for years, new technology makes it easier and faster. Now that anyone with a computer can subtly or to drastically alter images, news organizations have had to create policies and ethics standards that deal with photographs—once thought to be the most honest form of journalism—or risk deceiving readers with doctored images.

Recent cover photo fiascos:

National Geographic, February 1982

The pyramids were added and moved behind the camels on the February 1982 cover of National Geographic.

Time, June 1994

Time darkened the June 1994 cover of O.J. Simpson's arrest for the murder of his wife prompting charges that the magazinehad darkened Simpson's face in a racist and prejudicial attempt to make him look sinister and guilty.

Time editor James R. Gaines later apologized writing:

"To the extent that this caused offense to anyone, I deeply regret it."
"If there was anything wrong with the cover, in my view, it was that it was not immediately apparent that this was a photo-illustration rather than an unaltered photograph; to know that, a reader had to turn to our contents page or see the original mug shot on the opening page of the story. But making that distinction clearer will not end the debate over the manipulation of photographs. Nor should it. No single set of rules will ever cover all possible cases. It will remain, as it has always been, a matter of subjective judgment."

Below, Newsweek's cover of the same photo.

Newsweek, June 1994