The Associated Press has decided to withdraw a series of eight photographs showing portraits of victims of the November, 2015 Paris attacks that were awarded third prize in the People category of the World Press Photo contest on Thursday.
The photos were submitted in error. The photographs in question were never distributed by the AP - our criteria for entering work in contests - because of our policy on reproducing photographs taken by others.
While we are heartened that the AP photographer in question, Daniel Ochoa de Olza, also won second prize in the same category for his portraits of young girls marking spring’s arrival in Spain, we feel obliged to withdraw the Paris series.
We sincerely regret the inconvenience our withdrawal of these eight photos has caused World Press Photo and we will take immediate steps to prevent this from happening again in any photojournalism contest.
AP published a story about this development today.