This is a douche move, but incidentally their Photoshop retoucher is top notch. You have to change a lot of facial features to go from fear to happiness, and if you never saw the originals you wouldn’t know these were faked.

I’m not sure what to believe here. I can understand Vice’s explanation somewhat, that some of the families wanted a photo of their relative smiling since it was the only photo they had, but I also think those pictures should have just been given to the families, and not been used in the article.

As soon as the photos got used in the article they started erasing history. They should know better as journalists, so that’s their fuck up no matter what explanation they try to give.