Few would question that fraud is cause for dismissing an employee. In the age of ever-advancing computer technology, the temptation of a coveted award turned out to be too much for a photographer in China.
For some employees, the opportunity to win an award for job performance is a huge motivator.
For others, it motivates them to cheat in order to win the prize. Employees might fake numbers to break a production record or hide injuries to win a safety award.
In this case from China, a photographer altered one of his photos of pigeons, and that picture won a top prize given by the Photojournalist Society of China in 2005.
Zhang Liang was shooting photos of medical workers trying to give bird flu shots to pigeons. He now admits he Photoshopped a pigeon from elsewhere in the picture into the hands of a worker holding a hypodermic needle. (Not entirely surprising: Just how do those medical workers grab pigeons to give them shots?)
Zhang apologized and was fired from his job at the Harbin Daily.
This, of course, proves that a bird in Photoshop is not worth one in the hand.
