Former vice-chairman of photojournalist society quits for disagreement over photo forgery investigation

BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Jiang Duo, former vice-chairman of the Photojournalist Society of China (PSC) has announced he has quit because of the society's ambiguous attitude towards the forgery of a picture, which won in a national contest in 2005.

Jiang, one of the founders of the PSC and deputy director of its Academic Committee before the announcement, served as vice-chairman of the society from 1988 to 2003.

The disagreement between Jiang and other leading figures of the society started from a controversial photo shot by a Harbin Daily photojournalist, which won in the first China International Press Photo Contest, hold by the PSC in 2005.

The photo, which depicts pigeons receiving vaccine shots from medical workers in a square, was found to have at least one pigeon added by computer technology. The photo was criticized as a fake by netizens.

As one of the judges for the contest, Jiang made an online apology for not being able to identify the forgery, while acknowledging the photo is a fake one.

"The panel failed to identify the photo due to limited time, and I should bear the responsibility of the mistake," he said, in his online resignation last month.

But the author insisted that there was no cheating.

When the dispute was handed over to Hu Ying, secret-general of the PSC and also a member of the contest panel, he trusted the investigation work to Harbin Daily, which did not turn out any results.

"The photo should not be regarded as a false one before technical investigation, and there was not enough evidence," Hu said in an interview. "What Jiang said is not the PSC's opinion and has just messed up the whole thing," he said.

Jiang said Hu's words directly led to his quitting.

"The photo itself can tell the truth. Anyone with basic photographic knowledge can detect the problem. The society has turned a blind eye to cheating behavior," Jiang said.

"It is a heart-breaking choice. But I made up my mind because the society I founded is tolerating cheating," he said in a personal blog.

Founded in 1983, the PSC is a national academic association. The number of its members has risen to 2,850 this year. The society is now holding the fourth national photographic contest in Shanghai.