There are only nine images of the crash so far from the Reuters news wire, and the one containing the young woman’s body is the most illustrative of them all. It’d be easy to miss her, pale and small, within the wreckage. It’d be easy to miss the warning Reuters appended to its caption: “ATTENTION EDITORS – VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH.”

Most of the news agency photos being published of actual ISIS fighters (with a few exceptions stated below) are being pulled from either Twitter sites run by Isis or from jihadi-related Twitter posts. The question is, how is Reuters getting these pictures? And more significantly, has Reuters been enabling ISIL over the past three weeks in exchange for access?

what we have here is more of a teaching moment. Talking with many colleagues this week, I know I’m not the only one who is frustrated with Reuters. Given blanket denials and the refusal to address specifics information already published about the munitions story, it does a disservice to all the earnest professionals in the business, especially those working for the photo agency

We hope this this post might contribute to a thoughtful, open and persistent examination — among concerned citizens, the photo community and among photo- and news media – about the truth behind this story, as well as the issues surrounding how stories in conflict zones can be visually procured today. Below, we’ve paired photos from the story with either direct quotes or paraphrased comments from the reactions we received:

Seasoned combat photographers are never immune to the perils of war. But since Molhem’s death, several news media outlets have questioned Reuters’s reliance on a teenage photographer in a war zone. An examination of the events surrounding Molhem’s death has also raised questions about Reuters’s network of local photographers in Syria and their journalistic practices