Editors are being warned to make it clear when they used posed pictures or altered images in their papers after Luton on Sunday fell foul of a Press Complaints Commission adjudication.

The paper was found to have contravened the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code of Conduct when it put together an image that could have been mistaken for a real life scene.

Someone complained to the Commission, stating that publication of a supposed “vice girl” in a street scene was intended to “alarm and dismay” and that the paper had willfully used an invented image to achieve that aim.

The Commission concluded the photography was “significantly misleading”.

In its adjudication, it said: “There was nothing to indicate to readers that the scene had been posed and, given that the subject matter concerned an important matter of local public interest, considered that the newspaper should have taken greater care – for instance by publishing a suitable caption – to ensure that readers were not misled.

“The Commission took this opportunity to remind editors that they must make clear to readers when they have altered photographs in any material way.

“If they are unsure about whether their changes are significant they should incline towards transparency and declare that the image has been altered or artificially assembled, as the newspaper should have done on this occasion.

“Although in this case the breach of the Code was not particularly grave, it raised a point of principle to which the Commission attaches high importance.”

The article was about the increasing problem of prostitution on the streets of Luton. The image showed a street corner and a supposed vice girl on the pavement; but the complainant said that the picture had been either posed or put together as an amalgamation of two separate images.

The paper acknowledged that the photograph had been created from two separate images and explained that the woman who had posed as a prostitute had been happy to be pictured.

It emphasised that the problem of prostitution in the city was growing and highlighting the rise of the vice trade was in the public interest.

And it claimed the use of an illustrative photograph was quite legitimate in these circumstances even if it did not show a real-life scene.

The newspaper assured the complainant that if it used the image (or similar photos) again to illustrate articles, it would make clear that they were posed by a model.

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