The Photo editor of the Peterborough Evening newspaper showed a photograph from a feature about RAF training at Wittering. It featured two men in CS95 running from a huge fireball explosion. It was actually a dramatic composition with two images superimposed.
If that happened he should have been hauled up before the press complaints commission and exposed in the Media Guardian immediately. The only time I have ever heard of anything quite so scandalous taking place was the Mirror's fake prisoner abuse photos. You have no idea how badly that would have been received across the journalistic world had it been made known.
But to try to suggest that this is common practice is complete and utter nonsense. I have spent a bloody long time in journalism and on no occasion have I ever known of a journalist writing an article simply to sell papers. My only concern is to write the story as best as possible. The articles are written by journalists to report the facts and issues in that story. It is of course true that newspapers want to sell copies, they aren't bloody charities, but that is not the same thing at all.
There are often good reasons for criticising news reports but they are necessarily put together on the hoof with conflicting reports coming in and reporting on the armed forces is hampered by very necessary opsec and often ludicrous and very unnecessary attempts to cover up issues that it should be in everyone's interest to publicise.
People have every right to raise specific issues that are inaccurate in specific articles but the periodic rants against journalists on this thread are all too often led by numbskulls whose willingness to spout out on subjects they know nothing about only raises questions about them.
It's a bit like me saying most RAF pilots love flying really low on training to scare horses and cows, or use enormous amounts of public money to fly military aircraft to stag parties, or that most US pilots dont care who they shoot up on the ground. It is complete and utter nonsense and it is highly offensive.