False tsunami picture prompts apology from newspaper

The Mail and Guardian published an apology for printing a false picture of people in Sri Lanka fleeing the tsunami on its front page. The picture was e-mailed to the paper and to at least two of its online staff, sources said. It was found later that the photo was of a flooding China river, taken in 2002. The report points out that several newspapers in the United States and Canada were also taken in by the same photo. Guy Berger, head of the media and journalism department at Rhodes University, said journalists should be more careful at such times to verify the credibility of information. "You cannot blame a mistake like this on the fact that the Internet is an almost uncontrollable medium for the spread of manipulated or false pictures." The Internet's existence should only make a reporter more sceptical, he said.