ATLANTA - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution apologized to readers Monday for using a picture of Britney Spears (news) kissing Madonna (news - web sites) on the front page.
The picture, not much bigger than a postage stamp, was near the top of Friday's front page. It showed Spears and Madonna in an open-mouth kiss they shared at the MTV Video Music Awards the night before. A larger version of the picture was in the Living section.
The sloppy kiss picture elicited a deluge of complaints to the newspaper. In Monday's editions, managing editor Hank Klibanoff apologized, saying the picture should have been inside but not on the front page.
Klibanoff compared the Spears picture to graphic images from the war in Iraq (news - web sites).
"We ran images we otherwise might not have run. But that was war, and war was news. The photo we ran Friday was neither, and I wish I had limited its display to the inside of the Living section," Klibanoff wrote in a response to letters on the opinions page.
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