Only humans can lie and manipulate media in this context.
I suppose this has always happened and will always happen. These days I suppose we'd call it fake news
Not sure I want to get into this, but every single photograph ever produced has been manipulated and while some can be trusted more than others, none can be trusted to fully reflect reality or fully tell the truth.
As soon as you exclude something from a photograph you are forcing your view of reality onto the viewer. Excluding that power station from your sunset across the estuary, or "only" photographing boarded up shops in your high street.
Neither might reflect the "reality" of the estuary or the high street, even though both may be telling the "truth" in terms of what the photograph contains.
The "reality" of visiting the estuary or walking down the high street, may be completely different from the "reality" presented in the photograph.
On the assumption that no photograph can fully represent reality, how far a photograph can acceptably "misrepresent" reality depends on context, use and intent.
As far as I am aware, the plight of the homesteaders was desperate, and Lange's commission was to document homesteaders life.
Her experience of what it was like to be a homesteader would have been built on all her senses, and from interacting with many homesteaders. Maybe, once boiled down to a single image, this photograph was a better representation of the "reality" of being a homesteader, than the others, she had made.
It's always possible that the background to the people in the photograph didn't come to light until after it had been published and had made its acknowledged contribution to bringing help to the struggling homesteaders.
My views on this are far less confident than my words might suggest, but I am fairly confident that a belief that any photograph is a truthful representation of reality, is misplaced.
