I remember in the early-mid nineties as the software and computers powerful enough to run it became widely available there was a bit of paranoia over whether we would ever be able to trust photographic evidence again. Scientific American even had a cover article with Marilyn Monroe posing with Lincoln as an example. However all of that fear seems to have disappeared, even though photo-editing has been practically perfected in the last few years and is so easy that us amateurs can easily and quickly produce very realistic results. What happened to calm everyones fears?
The fact that we Post-Post-Moderns have the attention span of gnats.
The paranoia turned into general skepticism. Would anyone take photographic evidence, in the absence of other evidence, as fact anymore? Are there any recent examples of that?
Calm fears about what? I and eveybody I know, would not take a photo as absolute proof of anything. What’s to fear about manipulated photos, when people know how easy it is. The only fear is that people don’t know how easy it is to do, and take it as a proof of an event. There’s been photo manipulation and frauds for well over a hundred years.
This is an issue we deal with in forensic investigations all the time. It is so much easier for us to take a digital camera to a crime scene than an “analog” camera ( 
), but digital photographs are mistrusted and in some jurisdictions cannot be used unless there is a real film photograph backing it up. Unfortunately, a lot of our work relies upon people to explicitly accept that our photographic evidence is valid and accurate before we can then use the result of analysing that evidence - for example, if there is a photograph of a fingerprint from a crime scene, that photograph is used to search the fingerprints database to find matches, and the outcome of that search is what goes to court as evidence. The photograph itself is rarely questioned, even if the actual fingerprint wasn’t lifted and thus doesn’t exist as a physical item to be displayed. (It does happen of course, and in some rare cases the questioning is justified as the evidence may actually be fraudulent, but however unjustified, the question is still valid and photographs aren’t challenged often enough IMO.)
There are some computer programs now that will “protect” an image and embed security codes in it, track pixel-by-pixel changes to the picture, make a log of any changes made, and that can compare an altered picture to the original and point out where changes have been made (see: this technical explanation of one such tool). We are reluctant to avoid one clear advantage of digital imaging, which is the ability to enhance the image that was captured, and this is especially useful in document examination or fingerprint identification, so we have to keep an unaltered original as well as record detailed logs (or let the program record it for us) stating what alterations we have done to the photo, and we have to provide enough information that another person could do the same tasks and arrive at the same altered image. It’s a pain in the ass, but I think once digital image protection software becomes more advanced and intuitive there will be a much wider acceptance of digital images in law enforcement.
I really hope, anyway, because I hate film photography 
I’ve also thought that there should be some digital camera, and or recording media system produced for use in situations where a tampered pictures are a problem. Maybe a write only disk incorperating chemical indicators that are releaseed after pictures are taken, and change if if any writing to the card is done after an hour. The media it’s self could be digital information record to a photographic film cartridge even, not necessarialy the same film of current cameras. It’s a very rough idea as currently stated.
People now are terrified of people with cameras taking photos of little kids
IIRC from a similar previous thread, people are not simply presented with photo evidence; they are presented with testimony about the photographs. The credibility of the person testifying to the accuracy of the photographs is probably more important than the photographs themselves.
It makes sense, since photographic tampering has been around almost as long as photography. Stalin had plenty of this done in order to remove political undesirables from history.
Check out these examples of manipulation, all quite possible using film alone.
The Stalin example at the top is impressive.
I had read that most Soviet photomanipulations were deliberately bad, as a way of telling party members, “…and all that will be left is a bad dodge in the annual party congress photo.” The Age of McKinley has a great photo inset where a picture of McKinley and Garret Hobart sitting on McKinley’s lawn is changed to McKinley and Roosevelt.
I believe that a number of photographers (e.g. Adnan Hajj) have been fired for submitting doctored photographs. See this for lots of useful info - go halfway down for the burning tyres.
I remember years ago there was a lawsuit over the manipulation of an AP photo showing a civic meeting of some sort, which was held in a licensed establishment.
A “distracting” element was replaced with something more discreet – not an unsual practice, really.
The problem was, the distracting element was a pop can in front of one of the attendees. A mixed drink from elsewhere was substituted; it blended in much better than the bright red branded can, and didn’t draw the eye away from the focus of the photo. Unfortunately, the person who had their drink “replaced” was a recovering alcoholic who had no choice about the venue for the meeting, and had been quite careful in his selection of a “soft” drink.
The photo made it appear that he was off the wagon. The editing was innocent enough in its intent, but…
I’m not disputing that the Stalin photo has been doctored, but the one with the missing guy doesn’t look like it started out as the same image as the one that includes him - the pattern of ripples on the water surface behind is completely different (for the whole surface, even bits that were nowhere near the missing guy).
We just started to assume that everything was faked. 
we stopped “fearing” it, and just started to accept it.
A couple years ago, if somebody showed you a photo of himself at the Eifel Tower, you knew he had travelled to Paris. Now, you say “gee that’s a nice photo”, and then you ask yourself if he really did go to Paris.
I think you’re making the assumption that only the part that HAD to be changed – where the guy was – would be doctored.
As someone who does digital photo retouching on occasion, I would find it easier to replace the entire water surface than just part of it, too. Matching parts of water to other parts of water is a lot harder than wholesale replacement of half of the photo.
Innocent or not, no photo news agency should be editing any content in or out of their photos in this way. It’s against the ethics of photojournalism. When I worked for AFP, I certainly would have never been hired by them again if I tried any sort of digital manipulation that alters the content of the image.
Given that I’ve taught myself to manipulate photos without much trouble, I assume that most startling photos on the internet could be manipulated too. I like to think that most reputable news sources are above using them, though. I know they’re not, but I like…