The Associated Press said on Monday that it has removed seven photographs from its archive depicting Cuba's former President, Fidel Castro, which were digitally altered to hide what seems to be a "hearing aid".
The American news agency said through a press release that the photographs were released recently by a photo studio owned by the Cuban government, and they are looking into over 150 photographs to locate other photographs that might have been altered, reported The Guardian on its website.
Estudios Revolución, the authors of the photographs, distributed the photographs among the Cuban press and from there, they made their way into the Associated Press, before anyone could detect they had been manipulated.
According to the quoted sources, the original photographs were taken by Fidel's son, Alex Castro, during a meeting between the former Cuban President with the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa and the President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, last Jan. 29 in Havana.
Regarding this, Alex Castro, who collaborated with the Associated Press from the beginning to provide them with the original photographs, told the Associated Press that he did not know the photographs had been manipulated before being sent to the news agency.
"We have reached the conclusion that many of Fidel Castro's photographs have been manipulated. Removing elements from a photograph is absolutely unacceptable and clearly violates the agency's standards," said Santiago Lyon, the VP and director of photography for the Associated Press, quoted by the BBC this morning.
87-year-old Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba in 1959 and was the Island's President until 2008, were he stepped down and ceded command to his younger brother, Raúl. The former President's son, Alex Castro, has been in charge of taking most of his father's photographs since illness forced him to abandon his duties, at first gradually in 2006, and definitely in 2008.
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