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Yes it is, and I'm sure some junior editor is in serious hot water right now. But when you have sat on a flow of 25,000 photos over the last year (number made up), none of which were manipulated it is simply psychologically difficult to keep the proper level of skepticism.
The primary role of the photo editor is to 1) make sure the photo is topical and has journalistic interest, and 2) that it is is of sufficient quality for publication (in focus, reasonably color correct, horizon is level). In role #2, photo editors can approve certain modifications such as recropping, focusing, levelling, etc., but the photographers are not supposed to be making those decisions.
The various freelancers on the scene in Lebanon and Israel are each probably submitting hundreds or even thousands of photographs a day (they get paid for what is used, so throw it all at the wall) and the editor probably only has an an hour or two to go through them all, decide what will be uploaded to the wire and then get on to the next batch. He's probably primarily interested in technical details and I imagine it is easy to get into a stage where you can't see the forest for the trees.
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