>A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying.

Rules are even stricter than that for photojournalists. Photographers have lost jobs just for editing out extraneous objects (like a telephone pole "growing out" of someone's head) to make a photo look better. The thinking is likely along the lines of it's a slippery slope once you start editing out things.