A photo which was not: 'Released' Army pictures from Myanmar operation were fake

An integral part of publishing a news story is the photo along with the report. A day after the Indian Army attacked northeastern insurgents in Myanmar, media houses were busy hunting for a photo of the Indian Army bravehearts who avenged the death of 18 security personnel who were killed in an 4 June ambush by the UNLFW militants in Manipur's Chander district.That's when we found it. A photo of bunch of Indian Army commandos in front of a chopper looking happy and victorious. Almost every media house (including us) picked up the photo, captioned it, saying 'these soldiers had carried out the offensive against a group of militants,' and published it. A day later spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence Sitanshu Kar released a clarification and tweeted:There was more than one picture and the ANI news agency had tweeted them out. Two leading english newspapers carried them on their front page and almost every leading media house in the country used the photo.Almost every leading newspaper and media house used the picture despite a few online activists tweeting that the picture was fake.ANI had clearly stated in their tweets that the photos were that of the Indian Army team that carried out the Myanmar strike on 9 June. Hindustan Times quoted ANI multimedia head Sanjay Mehra as saying, "The image was duly authorised for use by the ADG PI (Additional Directorate General of Public Information) of the Army, with the specific request that the faces of the persons be morphed, which we duly did before release."The ADG PI rejected Mehra's statement and a senior officer said, "No such permission was given by us. We did not release any pictures of our special forces involved in the operations, nor do we intend to do so," according to the Hindustan Times.It was later clarified by an Army officer that the Army had released these images from 2009 to be used as "representational photos." "The Army did not mean it was an operational picture," The Hindu quoted the officer as saying.The incident also brought to light how media houses sometimes throw caution to the wind in the excitement of being the first to release/publish a photo or a story without a proper check on the source of the story/image. Sometimes, it just makes sense to wait.