Charlie Hebdo
Seen here are two editions of French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' one reading 'Irresponsible newspaper' (L) and the other, bearing an empty front page reading 'responsible newspaper'. These two editions were released one week after the magazine published an edition containing several cartoons which featured caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. Getty Images

The world's largest news hub, the Associated Press (AP), said on Wednesday (7 January) that it is removing photos of the Charlie Hebdo magazine that feature Prophet Muhammed from its commercial photo service.

None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. It's been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images.
- Paul Colford, AP spokesman

"None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. It's been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images," said AP spokesman Paul Colford.

The images are still accessible on the news wire, however AP confirmed that they are censored.

Several news organizations followed on the trend by cropping or pixelating Charlie Hebdo magazine covers depicting Prophet Muhammed following today's (7 January) deadly attack at the magazine's offices in Paris.

Amongst the news outlets, include New York Daily News and The Telegraph.

While some organizations opted to entirely crop out the magazine cover page when showing the magazine's director, Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, others chose to make more subtle moves by cropping out images of Prophet Muhammed from the displayed cartoons.

In response to the above tweet sent to AP, spokesman Paul Colford told BuzzFeed News: "The top right image in that tweet you sent – very much cropped by us to exclude the illustration – is the only AP staff-taken photo among the four. The other three are SIPA photos, automatically fed to AP's commercial photo division and now being removed from our system."

Meanwhile, French President François Hollande has declared Thursday (8 January) a day of mourning for the nation.

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