DON'T BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEE

The http://www.2bangkok.com/ site highlighted a recent case of photo manipulation in the Thai media.
The case involves two virtually identical images (right) taken to illustrate a Thai team that had triumphed at a Robot contest overseas. Both were published in different newspapers.
The bottom of these two images appeared in Thai Rath, Thailand's best-selling daily newspaper. If you look closely you will see the image of His Majesty The King being held by the person on the far right has been removed. A similar image being held by the person just right of centre has also been removed.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, or indeed if you know anything about Thailand, then you'll understand just how important His Majesty is in the lives of Thai people. So to remove his image would seem to be an extremely unwise thing to do.
The publishers of Thai Rath have justified their decision to Photoshop the image by saying that it was done as a matter of etiquette and to save the team from embarrassment, because holding an image of His Majesty in a position lower than everyone else is deemed to be offensive. According to them an image of His Majesty should always be held aloft.
The fact is that this image was doctored, for whatever reason, and Thai Rath should have made that clear when publishing. The same media standards you would expect in the UK and US simply do not apply here; most Western publications would have a Code that prohibits doctoring of images for whatever reason, or where an image has been altered it should be stated in the caption.