New York Times Airbrushes Recession?

The New York Times has pulled down a photo slide show from its website after some zealous bloggers over at Metafilter lobbed charges of Photoshopping at the paper.

The photographer says nothing was done to the pics, which apparently captured abandoned real estate projects. Though in the age of the air-brushed cover, where Photoshop is available to all and sundry, what constitutes as altering is questionable. Did he Photoshop people back into the houses? An extra missile into the sky, perhaps, to make the housing crisis look more threatening? No idea, the pics are down. And as we said, the photographer says he didn’t do anything. Regardless, it’s reassuring to see the NYT taking these things so seriously — journalism isn’t dead yet! And even if it was we’d have the sharp-eyed folks at Metafilter to pick up the slack.

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