Eyeballing a Time news photo; also, Al Neuharth papers the LoC.

One morning in a thousand when I climb into the "Press Box" cockpit, I take a break from the usual startup routine—power the ack-ack guns and calibrate them, adjust my bile level, kick a puppy—by flipping the switches and converting my death machine into a ombudsman's Barcalounger. 

My chin grows longer for better tugging. A nurse comes by and removes several pints of blood to ensure anemia in my prose style. Then, sprouting from my walls like mold after a New Orleans flood, come the awards that adorn any ombudsman's walls: An SPJ commendation; a certificate of completion for a diversity sensitivization seminar; a class photo of the Poynter Institute refresher course on fairness, accuracy, and ethics; and a walnut-and-brass plaque honoring my service to ONO—the Organization of News Ombudsmen.

I negotiate the mile-long (and growing) queues that are my e-mail and voice-mail inboxes in search of a reader comment that doesn't accuse the press of being anti- or pro-Israel, doesn't complain that reporters are captive of the Democrats or the Republicans, or isn't a part of a letter-writing campaign organized by some media watchdogs or a pressure group. Like ombudsmen everywhere, what I need is an open-and-shut case for my Sunday column, something that I can turn into a journalism lecture that doesn't sound too much like a jealous fit. Don't want to let on that I'm grouchy that I don't get to make the first call and only get to do the second guessing. And, today, I find it in an e-mail from a reader who takes issue with a photograph that accompanies the article "Stalking the Day Laborers" in the current edition (Dec. 5) of Time magazine.

The story documents new tactics by the Minutemen, the ad hoc and freelance border patrol group. In addition to scouring the borders for illegal immigrants, the group is now photographing day laborers they suspect have no legal right to be in this country as they gather in public places to solicit work.

The photo in question appears on the first page of the layout. The face of a day laborer has been graphically obscured, as the caption accompanying it explains, "to protect his identity."

Why obscure a news photo taken in a public place about a subject of national concern? (Ombudsmen love to start their columns with queries because it saves them the bother of having to exert the mental energy it takes to write a lede.)

As the Time article reports, the Minutemen distribute the photos of suspected illegal aliens to U.S. immigration officials and the IRS, as well as post them on the wehirealiens.com Web site. They hope to both discourage illegal immigrants from seeking work and deter employers from hiring them.

Time Deputy Managing Editor Steve Koepp says Time doesn't know the immigration status of the pictured laborer, so it's unfair to allow the context—Minutemen photographing people they think might be illegal immigrants—to imply that the individual entered the U.S. illegally. Also, if the Time photo hadn't been obscured, it could have been used by the Minutemen as part of their campaign to ostracize day laborers. But Koepp adds, "Even if [the Minutemen] weren't taking pictures, we'd have concerns."

But newspapers and magazines don't alter the faces captured in riot photographs just because they haven't determined in advance whether the faces belong to rioters or passers-by snapped by the shooter. By this logic, every face collected in a news photo of a day-labor site would require Photoshopping prior to publication because it may contain the image of an illegal immigrant, or a legal immigrant, or a natural-born citizen that might be misconstrued. (Or more broadly, any public photo that may contain any illegal act—jaywalking, neglecting to pick up dog poop, whatever.)

Koepp prefers a "situation-by-situation" approach. He looked at other pictures in which laborers' faces couldn't be seen, but none of them illustrate the Minutemen practice of aggressively confronting anybody who might look like an illegal immigrant in such a locale.