"It really didn't add anything to the picture."

Huh? WTF?
That's a bloody limb, for crissake.
It got my stomach churning a bit.

Notice the Virginian-Pilot just cropped it out.
THAT was a better choice.
But if this happened in my town, I think the bloody limb is part of the story.

Ya know, England has seen plenty of the real thing - we've had people getting blown up here "in real life" for 20+ years - do we need to see it splashed across front pages?

I'm certainly not saying you do. It's a perfectly defensible position to refrain from running gruesome photos like that. What is not defensible, in my mind, is altering news photographs in any way. If there's something in a photo you don't want to run in your newspaper, then don't use the dang photo.

Editing a photo in this way is no different that a writer who changes facts that are difficult. If the photo doesn't work as is then don't use it, but to allow for selective editing of what people take for reality is to invite a further loss of confidence in the press.

I saw a similar editing job in an Australian pictorial magazine where a the exposed breast of a dead woman was altered to conceal the nipple. Whether it was done well, or whether it was required at all is completely beside the point. The "right" thing to do would be to "redact" using a black box or coarse pixelisation: you are 'spared' viewing the image, but know that the editors have made changes in an otherwise clearly life-life picture. Compared to this, shifting the pyramids closer together is trivial.

i was in school when i found out about the bombing and i was absolutly appalled by what i had heard. my question is why do they do it and what do they get from it?
too be honest tony blair needs to wake up and relise that we do need to do something about it and open his eyes.
i dont think that what they queen said will have any fuss.
she said "im deeply shocked by what happened and i send sympathy to those affected.
they all need to wake up.