Kyodo News said Tuesday one of its staff photographers misrepresented three pictures from professional baseball games played between May 2012 and July 2013.
The Osaka-based male photographer, 28 failed to take pictures of three players when they hit home runs, and photos from other at-bats with false captions were found to have gone to wire, Kyodo said.
The photos purportedly depicted home runs hit by Luis Terrero of the Rakuten Eagles on May 19, 2012, Shunichi Nemoto of the Lotte Marines on Sept. 4, 2012, and Tony Blanco of the DeNA BayStars on July 14, 2013.
"I couldn't confess that I had missed the home runs," the photographer was quoted as saying during an in-house investigation. "I was naive to believe people wouldn't recognize the pictures were from other moments in the games."
The investigation was launched on Sept. 8 after the times shown in the photos were found not to match the times of the home runs.
"It is an unacceptable act for a news organization and we apologize," said Yuji Nakaya, managing director of Kyodo's General Administration Department. "We take it very seriously and will come up with measures to prevent a recurrence."
Kyodo is now investigating whether the photographer misrepresented other photos.