There's not many news stories where I can claim to have an "expert" opinion, but this is one.

2 days ago, Nine News ran a story with an image of Animal Justice Party MP, Georgie Purcell with what seemed to be an edited figure and, for some reason, added a visible midriff.

Director of Nine News, Hugh Nailon, said in a statement "Our graphics department sourced an online image of Georgie to use in our story on duck hunting. As is common practice, the image was resized to fit our specs. During that process, the automation by Photoshop created an image that was not consistent with the original."

As a designer, I decided to test this Photoshop glitch, and extend an image of Hugh Nailon.

To my astonishment, it chose to put him in a mini-skirt that looks remarkably similar to the one worn by Alicia Silverstone in the 90's hit, Clueless.

Only, of course it didn't. This is my own, incredible photoshop skills. (I honestly tried to AI him into a dress with some midriff, but Adobe are so aware of how this tech could be misused, the word "midriff" will bring up an error and a link to their 'Terms of Use'.)

The point is, Nine took liberties with the image of a young, female MP, for clicks. They got caught, to the point where they needed to apologise, but chose to lie. They could have taken their medicine and had a moment to reflect on their ethics – maybe try to make amends to Georgie – but instead they blamed Photoshop.

It's not just clueless. It's spineless.