Interesting Article for Discussion

[NgaiHill]

I don't know that I can say whether photoshopping a photo for a news story is right or wrong but compare it to a journalist reporting on a politicians speech. The whole speech isn't reproduced in the newspaper verbatim, just the relevant/interesting parts the the newspaper deems worthy of showing to the readers. Isn't this a form of "cloning out" or manipulating parts of the story? The same as manipulating or cloning parts of a photograph.

[robert lamont]

I don't bother reading papers or watching news on TV. And i take what i hear on the radio with a grain of salt. Unfortunantly there is a conflict of interest between the truth which is sometimes mundane and boring and DOESN'T SELL and the profitability of the media. Basically fat cats get fatter the more media is sold. It is in their best interest to sensationalize and or fabricate to make a story look good or more interesting. I am sure there are those who endeavor to be truthful about their stories, just not enough of them. I think this fella was on the hit list and he gave them a reason, or someone complained so they had to be seen to "do something".

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

That ship has already sailed, for both PJs and reporters.

Are there honest reporters? I'm sure there are. I see no way to winnow the wheat from the chaff from the outside, though. And when "Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" is the priority for a significant percentage of journalists, "factual and ... honest" simply isn't.

Still, most photographers, if they are a member of National Press Photographers Association or any other pro association they are held under the Code of Ethics.

[Doug Sundseth]

I can't comment on the content of the written code of ethics of a specific journalistic organization. I will say that it's either toothless, meaningless, or honored primarily in the breach, given the evidence of any number of journalistic enterprises.

Following rules for the sake of following rules rather than actually trying to report multiple sides of stories isn't the sort of thing that raises my confidence. From speaking to and reading multiple PJs and former PJs, it's a dire ethical breach to photoshop out a poorly placed electrical outlet. But moving a chair in front of the outlet is just fine. It's an unignorable violation of ethics to clone people into a crowd scene to increase the number of people in the scene, but it's just fine to crop so tightly that 20 people look like hundreds.

If anything, I think that the current "code of ethics" acts as a convenient cover under which to mislead readers. When a journalist can decide the story line and then, without breach of "ethics", go gather out-of-context quotes and convenient photographs to support that story, "ethics" has little relation to what I would consider "ethical".

YMMV.

[NathanFranke]

^^ +1 this.

As for the guy who got fired, consider: the AP Style Guide has all kinds of tips for writing for lowest-common-denominator clarity. A picture being worth a thousand words, he changed a sentence from "two egrets were fighting over food, which turned out to be a frog" to "two egrets were fighting over a frog."

[andyw]

Whether or not the image is manipulated in post processing or not (personally think only sharpness, colour balance and limited cropping should be changed once committed to film/sensor), there is ample opportunity at the shooting stage to change the picture through judicious positioning, choice of lens etc etc.

The haunting picture of the vulture and child taken by Kevin Carter is a good example of how an image can be made to alter the viewers perception of a scene.
The image "looks like" the vulture is just waiting for an abandoned child to die in a lone area.
The truth (according to those there at the time) is different.

Look at press shots of riots or disturbances in general. Same viewpoint could and often does give two conflicting views of the situation.
There is rarely any need for post shoot manipulation of press images as the individual photographers own views or those of their editors will do that in the taking and subsequent publication of the image.