Reuters Accused of Cropping Flotilla Photos
A blog has criticized the Reuters news agency for cropping the knives of activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla from photos it distributed to newspapers.
The blood of a wounded Israel soldier also was omitted from the two photographs first questioned by the Little Green Footballs blog.
“That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo,” the blogger wrote. “Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision.”
Reuters said it is standard operating procedure to crop photos at the margins, and replaced the cropped images with the original ones after it was brought to the agency’s attention.
The photos were released to news services and other media by the Turkish daily Hurriyet. Other news services, such as the Associated Press, did not crop the photos.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO