Why You Can't Trust News Photography

[cmotherofpirl]

[url="http://www.slate.com/id/2147502/?nav=navoa"]http://www.slate.com/id/2147502/?nav=navoa[/url]

[FullTruth]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1214020' date='Mar 15 2007, 11:01 AM'][url="http://www.slate.com/id/2147502/?nav=navoa"]http://www.slate.com/id/2147502/?nav=navoa[/url][/quote]
Cmom, when I take News Photos, you can rest assured I won't do anything to manipulate them. But I'm not your everyday non-christian storyteller.

[MissScripture]

[quote name='FullTruth' post='1214339' date='Mar 15 2007, 08:16 PM']Cmom, when I take News Photos, you can rest assured I won't do anything to manipulate them. But I'm not your everyday non-christian storyteller.[/quote]
I don't think she's necessarily worried about someone here altering them, so much as pointing out that they may be altered when we get them.

[cmotherofpirl]

I always crop mine and improve the sharpness etc, but never alter the actual image.
Did you see in France you can go to jail if you are a private citizen and report or photograph a breaking story?

They have become a captive nation

[FullTruth]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1214472' date='Mar 16 2007, 10:54 AM']I always crop mine and improve the sharpness etc, but never alter the actual image.
Did you see in France you can go to jail if you are a private citizen and report or photograph a breaking story?

They have become a captive nation [/quote]
Disgusting.

Disgusting.

Disgusting.

The Government shouldn't have any right doing that. I hope it is a law in paper only, and never gets enforced.

[catholicinsd]

I understand Mrs. Blair has the same problem with photography.

[BurkeFan]

When I was editor of my high school paper, I admit to editing a few photos, though, the primary instance was to add someone to a group photo who should have been in it in the first place.

[Maggyie]

In my ethics class in J-school (yes, the journalism students had to study ethics, and the professor was not a relativist!) we spent a lot of time discussing how news photographs could be altered. There was the famous case at UW-Madison (my parents' alma-mater, they just lost in the NCAA tournament, boo-hoo) where the cover of one of their brochures was altered to show an African-American in the stands at a Badgers football game.

The goal was to show "diversity" at UW for all the perspective students who would get the brochure. Of course, the best way to show the supposed diversity would be to photograph groups with both white people and black people. But the lazy editor decided it would be better to just Photoshop a black guy in. Not smart, especially since you didn't even need any graphics training to spot the fake.

There was also the incident during the OJ Simpson trial, in which Time Magazine ran a black-and-white photo of Mr. Simpson on the cover; the problem being that the photo was darkened. At the time, some people felt that this was an attempt to make Mr. Simpson look "more black" and thus increase the impression that he was guilty.

The overall rule we learned in ethics class was that it was sometimes all right to alter photographs so long as the changes did not change the meaning and the image was clearly labeled as "photo illustration."

Edited March 18, 2007 by Maggie