NEW technology that enables the manipulation of photographic images has blurred the line between fact and fiction.

While the memory of a fake photo of the South China tiger taken by Shaanxi villager Zhou Zhenglong is still fresh, Chinese netizens have posted new findings. Two award-winning news photos — one by Liu Weiqiang showing Tibetan antelopes and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and another by Zhang Liang showing a quarantine worker inoculating pigeons against bird flu — were proved to be fake.

The pop-up fake photos have given rise to an “anti-doping” campaign in photojournalism circles, joined by photographers with an eye for truth. Finding their bases online at www.blshe.com, www.xici.net and ublog.daqi.com, the fake-busters analyze various technical parameters to verify the authenticity of news photos.

“Photographs are believed by our readers to be an accurate recording of an event,” said Qi Jieshuang, a journalist with the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily. “We expose fake photos to safeguard the top value of news, credibility.”

Before the spread of digital cameras and software like Photoshop, which enables people to modify photos, producing fake photos had been a daunting task in the traditional film and darkroom era. New technology has changed the whole game.

“It’s OK if people want to modify their photos so that they can use them as wallpaper on their personal computers,” Qi said. Using them in newspapers and submitting them for news photo competitions, however, would be transgressing the rules of the trade.

“More than one journalist in the United States was fired after being caught cheating,” said the veteran photographer who began to research the topic several years ago.

Connected by the Internet, the busters began to form unions last year to contribute to a group cause to expose counterfeit photos.

“We news cameramen are frequent users of ublog.daqi.com. Publishing critical articles about the fakes on the Web got us acquainted and we gradually formed this coterie headed by Sheng Xigui, a professor at Renmin University,” Qi said.

Known as Consumer Rights Day, March 15 has become a day with mass fake-busting action taken against counterfeit commodities across China. Qi and his colleagues took the battle into the field of journalism. They posted an article on March 15 last year, calling for a fake-busting campaign targeting news photos. More than 80 people posted articles to respond to their call within days, which started a hot debate on the Web.

They then spotted the pigeon inoculation photo, a gold prizewinner of the China International Press Photo Contest (CHIPP), and verified it had been modified with Photoshop. With clear evidence, they submitted a report to the organizing committee of CHIPP, which led to an apology by a jury member. The group had a hand in exposing the fake tiger photo as well as another award-winning lotus photo.

On Feb. 12 this year, they proved that the Tibetan antelope photo, which won a bronze at a CCTV news photo contest in 2006, was achieved by merging two photos.

Thanks to the “fake tiger” of Zhou Zhenglong, which sparked huge public interest,people became aware of the problem and began to use various techniques to exame, Qi said. “People used three-dimension technology to discover that the tiger image was two-dimensional. The issue prompted people to look back at previous photos that were dubious.”

“The large number of fakes has exposed a lack of discipline in China’s press,” Qi said.

Although there is no universal rule governing the field of news photography, newspapers abroad often have their own regulations.

The Washington Post, for instance, allows traditional darkroom techniques such as adjustment of contrast and gray scale but strictly prohibits “alteration of photographs in any way so as to mislead, confuse or otherwise misrepresent the accuracy of those events.”

The use of technology to create new kinds of imagery is acceptable only where such use is clearly a work of fictional imagery, the paper also stipulates. Journalists infringing the rules will be sacked immediately after being exposed.

The Chinese press, according to Qi, is somewhat tolerant with posed photos resulted from a long tradition of political propaganda.

“The editor-in-chief of Daqing Daily was also forced to resign after the Tibetan antelope photo was exposed. Many people had expressed sympathy for him,” Qi recalled.

In the long term, the Chinese media need to build an operable accountability system to treat this issue, said Zhang Xiang’ou, a media critic.

“The issue is not just about fake photos,” said a netizen. “If we can’t trust newspapers, which are meant to represent the conscience of our society and speak the truth, who else can we trust? It’s a satirical reflection of the lack of credibility in today’s Chinese society.” That would be too heavy a topic.

At least, the campaign of fake photo busters has been fruitful.

During the 16th news photo contest organized by People Photo that concluded Monday, the jury disqualified two group-photo entrants that had misleading captions. They were also more cautious: Eight out of 50 competition categories were vacant.