852. Why do rinairs and TTG allow “cropping” but don’t allow “deleting” things?

Because trusted photographs show viewers “nothing that the camera lens did not see”—

—and “cropping” meets that criterion but “deleting” does not.

• With a photo that has been cropped, everything that the viewer sees was visible to the camera lens at the moment the photo was taken.

• But with a photo from which anything has been deleted, the viewer sees things that were NOT visible to the camera lens at the moment the photo was taken.

That’s because unless a “hole” is left in the photograph, every “deletion” involves “adding” something in its place

— an insertion that is based on guesswork about what the camera lens “might have seen” if the deleted item(s) hadn’t been present when the photo was recorded.

“Guesswork” does not foster “trust.”

Respected news agencies — and thus rinairs — have the same policy as TTG on “cropping vs. deleting.”