Sun-Times Media Photographer Exposed

(Photo credit: Krista76)Sun-Times Media photographer Tamara Bell, whose work appeared in Pioneer Press publications, including the Morton Grove Champion and the Deerfield Review, has been fired for fabricating names and quotes, the Pioneer Press publisher has announced.

Sparked by a reader's complaint, the newspaper chain launched an internal probe that uncovered  43 photos and captions from the "Question of the Week" feature that proved questionable. According to Publisher Chris Krug, Bell, when confronted, admitted to 22 instances of faking names and quotes.

Hard to gauge which is more puzzling--that a professional photojournalist would engage in such conduct and not believe the fakery would be uncovered, or that, given the small-town nature of the papers that ran the "Question of the Week," it took so long for her superiors to discover the chicanery.