Photojournalism, Technology and Ethics

7/29/2019 Photojournalism, Technology and Ethics

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O Pctes Mst Aas Te te Tt 1

Te Gode Age o Potooasm 7

Ateed Potogaps, Staged Sots ad te Ea o Dstst 20

Toad a 21st Cet Etca Mode 41

Bbogap 53

COnTEnTS

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1

Our PiCTurES MuST

AlwAyS TEll ThE TruTh

Theres an old saying that there are no atheists in oxholes.

When threatened or under re, people inevitably cling to some-

thing certain to guide them through uncertain times. In lie and

death situations, this something is oten a Bible.Today, the proession o photojournalism as we know it is

threatened by technological transormation, by the rise o

video, by ragmentation o the media. It s under re rom a sus-

picious publicwatchdog bloggers, cable and radio pundits,

and other critics who question the proessions credibility and

authority to bring us an accurate picture o the world.

For photojournalists, it would be a great time to have a Biblein the orm o a uniorm, enorceable code o ethicshandy.

Unortunately, photojournalists have no such thing. There is

no established set o rules to see news photographers through

this storm.

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i n t r o d u c t i o n

O u r P i c t u r e s M u s t A l w A y s t e l l t h e t r u t h

While ethical decisions have long played a central role in

the business o newsgathering, journalists have never been

governed by ormal ethical stan-

dards. This is a key reason thatjournalism, by denition, is actu-

ally not a proession. You cant

be disbarred or lose your license

as a journalist.

However, as with the incre-

mental emergence o the Eng-

lish common law, journalistshave gravitated over time to a

handul o general ethical princi-

ples that are widely recognized.

In the United States, these prin-

ciples are designed to enhance

journalisms authority by ensuring that reporting is accurate,

comprehensive and independent.For print photojournalists, these principles can be sum-

marized in two basic axioms that have guided their work or

decades:

While ethical decisions have longplayed a central role in the business

o newsgathering, journalists

have never been governed by

ormal ethical standards. This

is a key reason that journalism,by denition, is actually not a

proession. You cant be disbarred

or lose your license as a journalist.



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1 Altering photographs is unethical. Ethicalphotojournalists do not alter photographs beyond what

is necessary to optimize the technical quality o the

image. As the Associated Press states in its photo editing

policy,

Electronic imaging raises new questions . . .

but the answers all come rom old values . . . Only

the established norms o standard photo printing

methods such as burning, dodging, toning and

cropping are acceptable. Retouching is limited to

removal o normal scratches and dust spots . . .

Color adjustment should always be minimal.

2 Staging photographs is unethical. Ethicalphotojournalists do not stage, recreate or alter a scene or

a news photograph. As the Tampa Tribunes policy states,

We dont stage, re-enact or recreate news

events or photos. Personality portraits and studio

illustrations shouldnt create an articial sense

o spontaneity . . . Removing or adding an object

in an editorial photograph is not permitted.



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The rhetorical justications or these axioms center on

public service. Rather than simply selling newspapers or

attracting TV ratings, journalists have a higher calling

to provide their audiences with the knowledge requiredto be inormed contributors to a democracy. And this can

only happen when the public believes in the newspapers

authority.

Beyond this consideration, credibility is essential to

mainstream news organizations rom a business standpoint. I

audiences dont believe they can trust what theyre reading

and seeingits the equivalent o a broken product. Andconsumers dont buy broken products or very long.

As the New York Times explains in its Guidelines on Our

Integrity:

Reporters, editors, photographers and all members o

the news sta o the New York Times share a common and

essential interest in protecting the integrity o the newspaper

. . . Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation o

the Times. We must do nothing that would undermine or

dilute it and everything possible to enhance it.



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The statement goes on to issue this specic mandate to Times

photographers: Images in our pages that purport to depict

reality must be genuine in every way.

The Washington Post expresses its photographers mission insimilarly absolute terms: Photography has come to be trusted

as a virtual record o an event. We must never betray that trust.

And the Associated Press puts it this way: Our pictures must

always tell the truth.

But what happens when technology makes altering images

innitely easier to achieveand

ar harder to detect? What hap-pens when television videogra-

phers, who have never subscribed

to strict newspaper guidelines on

staging shots, come to the ore

at journalistic organizations like

the National Press Photographers

Association? What happens wheninuential segments o the public

lose aith in time-worn concepts like journalistic objectivity

and when every new manipulated and staged image seems to

strengthen their case?

What happens when inuentialsegments o the public lose aith in

time-worn concepts like journalistic

objectivityand when every new

manipulated and staged image

seems to strengthen their case?



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Thats when cracks start to surace in the monolith o photo-

graphic truth. When the rulebooks pages begin to look gray

rather than black and white. And when the ground beneath

news photographers starts to eel like a slippery slope ratherthan solid rock.

Howard Chapnick, leader o the Black Star photographic

agency or more than 25 years beore his death in 1996, said

the ollowing o photojournalistic ethics:

Credibility. Responsibility. These words give us the

right to call photography a proession rather than a

business. Not maintaining that credibility will diminish our

journalistic impact and sel-respect, and the importance o

photography as communication.

What implications do todays technological upheaval, rapidly

changing media landscape, and other changes have or the

uture o photojournalism as a credible source o visual inor-

mation? What actions can photographers, editors and publish-ers take to ensure photojournalisms authority with audiences,

now and in the years ahead?

We examine these questions through the prism o photo-

journalisms past, present and uture.



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2ThE GOlDEn AGE Of

PhOTOjOurnAliSM

PrE-EThiCS PhOTOjOurnAliSM:

ThE EArly yEArS

The manipulation and staging o news photographs has notalways been a question o ethics. In the early days o photo-

journalism, it was oten a question o technological limitations.

Photojournalism as we know it todaycandid, lie as it is

photographywas dicult i not impossible to achieve beore

the emergence o innovations like the ash bulb, electronic

ash and Leica camera in the 1920s and 30s.

Beyond the technology, explains Dennis Dunleavyasso-ciate proessor o communications at Southern Oregon

University and author o The Big Picture blogthe con-

cept o manipulation, in all its orms, had been inherent to



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T h e G o l d e n A G e o f P h o T o j o u r n A l i s m

photography rom its begin-

nings. Historically, photog-

raphy has always been about

manipulation, Dunleavy says.Even the smile is a orm o

manipulation, because it may

mask the true eelings o the

subject.

The New York Times

began publishing photos

in 1896, and by the early 20th

century newspapers acrossthe country were adding photos to their pages. Generally

these were posed or staged photographsoten trumpeted

as the worlds rst photograph o various events, loca-

tions or phenomena. While more candid shots were sought

ater by the publicthe 1898 paparazzi shots o German

Chancellor Bismarck on his deathbed created a sensationthey

appeared rarely.Lacking the technology necessary to create the kind o com-

pelling images the public craved, some newspaper editors got

creative. Bernarr MacFadden, publisher o the New York Graphic,

Historically, photography has

always been about manipulation,

Dunleavy says. Even the smileis a orm o manipulation,

because it may mask the true

eelings o the subject.



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the New York City tabloid that launched the careers o Walter

Winchell and Ed Sullivan, invented a photographic process that

resulted in the composograph. Composographs, as described

by Bob Stepno, were startling ront page images created in theart department by cutting and pasting the aces o celebrities

onto the bodies o oten scantily-clad models posed to illustrate

some real-lie scene where a camera simply couldnt go (espe-

cially with the ash powder cameramen used in those days).

MacFaddens rst composograph appeared in 1925, during

the inamous divorce trial o Alice Rhinelander, in which the

womans attorney had her strip to the waist in ront o the court(to demonstrate that her white husband should have known

she was Arican-American when they wed). As Ken Kobre writes

o the creation in his textbook, Photojournalism: The Proession-

als Approach,

Harry Grogin, The Graphics assistant art director . . .

began tearing up photographs o Alice, o the judge, o

opposing counsel, o the stolid Rhinelander, o Alices

mother, o Rhinelanders lordly ather. Then he put them

through a process by which they would come out in proper



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proportion. Meanwhile, Grogin sent or an actress whom

he posed as he imagined Alice Rhinelander would have

stood beore the lawyers and the judge. For the photo, the

art director had the actress wear as little as possible.Grogin used twenty separate photos to arrive at the

one amous shot, but or the Graphic, it was well worth the

eort. The picture was believable. You eel you are looking

in on the judges chambers. With the birth o The Graphic

composograph,The Graphics circulation rose rom 60,000

to several hundred thousand ater that issue.

Kobre says that while industry publications like Editor and

Publisher blasted the shocking news-picture, the criticism was

reserved or the ofense o putting a nearly nude woman on the

newspapers ront pagenot or the photographic manipula-

tion itsel.

Toad a G ode Age

Early in rst decades o the 20th century, a movement emerged

to proessionalize newspapers to enhance their authority and

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credibility with the public. Part o this movement was promo-

tion o the doctrine o objectivity, and the ideal that journalists

could be depended on to be independent observers, deliver-

ing just the acts.This became orthodoxy by the 1930sabout the same time

that technological innovations made possible a more candid,

spontaneous brand o photojournalism. The combination o

new journalistic standards and the technology necessary to

achieve them visually gave birth to an era commonly known as

the golden age o photojournalism, rom the 1930s to the 1950s.

This is where Lie Magazineas well as the Black Star photo-graphic agencyenter our story. Beore Lie began publishing

in 1936, newspapers had dominated the creation and dissemi-

nation o photojournalism in the United States. Photography

was seen as subordinate to text, designed to support and illus-

trate the work o the writers.

Lie turned this ormula on its head, bringing a new style o

photojournalism rom Weimar-era Germany that demonstratedhow images could tell stories in ways that words simply couldnt.

In these pictures, as described in the bookBlack Star: 60 Years o

Photojournalism,



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Peopleprominent gures as well as the unknown

ower sellerappeared in photographs o the time as

both natural and spontaneous. The photographers staged

nothing and gave the subjects o their curiosity no chanceo posing . . . Those who saw the

photographs thought they were

actually present.

German photojournalism came

to the United States with the help

o Jewish migrs eeing the Nazi

regime. Three o these migrs

ounded the Black Star photo-

graphic agency, which brought Lie

some o its most amous photogra-

phers, including Robert Capa. Lie

was the countrys rst all-photogra-

phy news magazine and would dominate the periodical market

rom its introduction through the 1960s.

By World War II, the inuence o photojournalism had

grown dramaticallyand the publics expectations o photo-

journalists had grown as well. News photographers were now

By World War II, the inuence

o photojournalism had grown

dramaticallyand the publics

expectations o photojournalists

had grown as well. Newsphotographers were now

expected to capture truthand

only truthwith their images.



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expected to capture truthand only truthwith their images.

The most amous single image o the war, in act, was

embroiled in a controversy that would hardly have been imag-

inable two decades earlier. Associated Press photographer JoeRosenthals photograph o the ag-raising at Iwo Jima was an

immediate sensationappearing on the ront pages o Sunday

newspapers nationwide on Feb. 25, 1945.

Soon ater, however, a Time-Lie correspondent accused

Rosenthal o staging the photo, and Time Magazines radio show

reported that Rosenthal arrived too late or the shot and could

not resist reposing his characters in historic ashion. Time laterretracted the story but public doubt lingered or decades.

As Daniel Bersak points out in Ethics in Photojournalism:

Past, Present and Future, his MIT masters thesis, the public likely

would not have cared whether or not Rosenthals photo were

staged in the 1920s. In decades previous, there would have been

no ethical problem either wayhad Rosenthal posed the pic-

ture or had he not, nobody would have protested, Bersak writes.Now that photojournalism had emerged as such an impor-

tant orce in news reporting, however, the question provoked a

major ethical controversy. The year ater Rosenthals photo, the



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National Press Photographers Association was ormed; today, it

remains the most inuential arbiter on ethical issues in photo-

journalism.

Yet, while photojournalists were held to new and higher ethi-cal standards during the golden age, the great photographers o

the time still engaged in practices that today might be rowned

upon as manipulation. And in telling stories with images, some

photographers presented a strong point o view on their sub-

ject matter that today might be considered slanted or lacking

objectivity.

It is only since the advent o Photoshop that we have hadthis undamentalist attitude about changing photographs, says

longtime Black Star photographer Michael Coyne. He explains:

Beore Photoshop, it was considered OK to change the

images in the darkroomburn, dodge, crop, print excessively

dark to give a dierent mood. or sandwich two negatives or

a double exposure. We dont have to look any urther than the

great photography legend W. Eugene Smith to see all o these

tools being applied.



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Brian Ledbetter, author o the photojournalism criticism blog

Snapped Shot, points out that when photographer Robert Capa

rushed to cover the Spanish Civil War, objectivity was not one o

his aims. Says Brian:

According to [Capa biographer] Richard Whelan, Capa

and his girlriend were eager to use their cameras to win

worldwide support or the Spanish Republic and the anti-

ascist cause. This doesnt exactly lend itsel to an impartial

reporting o events, even though it does result in passionate,

award-winning photography.

The golden age o photojournalism would be short-lived.

David Weintraub, photography instructor at the University o

South Carolina, mourns the eras end and wonders what the

impact o photographers like Capa, Smith and others might

have been had they lived in our present day:

How the photographers working during the Depression,

World War II, and the 1950s would have visually interpreted

global climate change or the war in Iraq is anybodys

guess. Compared to our current day, there were probably



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ar ewer photographic images in circulation, but I wonder

i those that were seen by the publicespecially in

magazines such as Lie and Lookmattered more than

the piles we blithely wade through each day.

Ultimately, however, the golden age ended not because o a

lack o talented photographersbut because o technologies

that spawned a new media universe.

fagmetato, Dstemedato ad te Pbc Tst

Starting in the 1950s, the audience that once turned primar-

ily to print photographers or visual journalism began to rag-

mentrst with the emergence o television news and then,

our decades later, with the Internet.

Television killed Lie magazine (which began to lose circula-

tion in the late 1950s beore its eventual demise), and mortally

wounded newspapers. The percentage o Americans reading

the paper has been in decline since the 50s, although tremen-

dous population growth masked the problem or many years.

Only in 1990 did absolute circulation gures drop or the rst

time; theyve been in reeall ever since.



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Fragmentation o the media began in earnest with the emer-

gence o cable television in the 1970s, which pulled audience

away rom the broadcast networks. In the news business, the

launch o CNN in 1980, ollowed by numerous other cablechannels ofering news, has led to

a decline in ratings, inuence, and

budgets or the once-dominant

broadcast news organizations.

As the media universe has splin-

tered, an increasing number o

media outletsrst in radio, thenin cable news and on the Internet

have evolved rom news reporting

to news interpretation. A central ele-

ment o the interpretive approach

has been politically-charged media

criticismcommentators and analysts weighing in on the limi-

tations, biases, and missteps o so-called mainstream media,generally meaning those traditional print and television outlets

striving or an objective approach to the news.

Nearly every week, it seems,

the images o proessional

photojournalists are being put

under the magniying glass, as

bloggers and others look or

evidence o staging, doctoring,

or other orms o manipulation.



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Further distancing audiences rom traditional media is the

disintermediation enabled by the Internet, particularly in the era

o social networking. The media, even in all its ragments, is no

longer the all-powerul lter it once was. Today, corporations arewriting their press releases as much or their customerswho can

nd them reely on the Webas or the press itsel. And citizen

journalists are publishing their own accounts o the events they

witnessincluding photography o these events. The media is

increasingly seen as a awed middleman in the dissemination

o inormation, rather than an indispensible clarion o truth.

Distrust o mainstream media has become so ubiquitous thatit now even comes rom pundits within the very media organiza-

tions they viliy. The ideal o objectivity is increasingly viewed by

the public as a alse standard masking a hidden agenda. A poll

conducted by Sacred Heart University earlier this year showed

that ewer than 20 percent o Americans believe most o what

they see in the newsdown rom 27 percent ve years ago.

This crisis o condence has taken its toll on news organiza-tionsand on the photojournalists who work or them, whose

work is under scrutiny as never beore. Nearly every week, it

seems, the images o proessional photojournalists are being



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put under the magniying glass, as bloggers and others look or

evidence o staging, doctoring, or other orms o manipulation.

Too oten, they have ound what they are looking or.

As David Perlmutter, proessor and associate dean at theUniversity o Kansas School o Journalism & Mass Communica-

tions, wrote in 2006 ater a photo-doctoring scandal involving

Reuters:

In twenty years o researching and teaching about the

art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have

never witnessed or heard o such a wave o attacks on the

people who take news pictures and on the basic premise

that nonction news photo- and videography is possible.

John Long, chairman o the ethics and standards committee

o the National Press Photographers Association, describes the

crisis this way: The public is losing aith in us. Without credibil-

ity, we have nothing; we cannot survive.



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nEw TEChnOlOGiES, nEw TEMPTATiOnS:

AlTErinG PhOTOGrAPhS

As challenges to photojournalisms integrity come rom theoutside, in the orm o a skeptical public, they also increasingly

coming rom withinas the combination o digital photogra-

phy and Photoshop has made manipulating images easier to

achieve and harder to detect.

Even beore digital photography came to the ore, however,

instances o manipulation had begun capturing the publics

attention. Some o theseas David Weintraub o the Univer-sity o South Carolina points outhave become the stuf o

legend in photography circles, including:

3AlTErED PhOTOGrAPhS, STAGED

ShOTS AnD ThE ErA Of DiSTruST



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A l t e r e d P h o t o g r A P h s , s t A g e d s h o t s A n d t h e e r A o f d i s t r u s t

. . . National Geographic moving the Pyramids to t

on its cover (February 1982); Day in the Lie o America

manipulating a horizontal image to t vertically on its

cover (1985); and Newsday eaturing Olympic hopeuls(and bitter rivals) Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding ice-

skating together (Feb. 16, 1994)a day beore the joint

practice session actually took place.

While these instances provoked intense discussion in the pho-

tographic community, they did not create the broader public

outrage that more recent instances o manipulation have pro-

vokedspurred by political polarization, blog criticism, and

a widening awareness o Photoshop and its capabilities, all o

which have served to ampliy public skepticism.

In the past two years alone, the photojournalism commu-

nity has been rocked by scandals that have chipped away at

the proessions credibility with audiencesand in some cases,

have caused photographers to wonder whats right and wrong

today.

These incidents include:

The ring o Charlotte Observer photographer

Patrick Schneider, July 2006.



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Sensitive to rising concerns over photo

manipulation, the North Carolina Press

Photographers Association in 2003 rescinded

three awards to Schneider or excessivedodging (lightening a specic area) and

burning (darkening a specic area)

standard darkroom practices that had now

become common Photoshop techniques.

Schneider was suspended but stood by

his work, saying, I used the tools that or

decades have been used in the darkroomand now in Photoshop I do them with more

precision. My goal is to bring more impact to

my images, to stop the readers and draw their

attention.

Three years later, in July 2006, Schneider

was red ater altering the background

color o an image o a reghter. He claimedhe was only attempting to recapture

the actual color o the sky, lost when he

underexposed the photo. Upon discovering



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the manipulation, the paper released this

statement: Photographer Patrick Schneiders

photo depicted a Charlotte reghter on a

ladder, silhouetted by the light o the earlymorning sun. In the original photo, the sky in

the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with

photo-editing sotware, the sky became a

deep red and the sun took on a more distinct

halo. The Observers photo policy states: No

colors will be altered rom the original scene

photographed.

The Adnan Hajj/Reuters controversy, August 2006.

Lebanese reelance photographer Adnan

Hajj created an image depicting thick black

smoke rising above buildings in Beirut

ater an Israeli air attack. The Reuters news

agency pulled the shot rom its Web site aterconservative blogger Charles Johnson o

Little Green Footballs posted evidence that



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the photo had been altered with Photoshops

clone stamp tool to increase and darken the

amount o smoke in the image. Soon ater,

bloggers identied other images by Hajj thatappeared to have been altered; to many, Hajjs

actions seemed designed to arouse public

outcry against Israel.

The photo manipulation set of a restorm

among U.S. political conservatives

rst on the blogosphere, then on radio

and cable newsbecause it seemed tovalidate accusations that the mainstream

media advocates liberal causes. The

controversy spread to images distributed

by the Associated Press and other news

organizations during the 2006 Lebanon

War, encompassing charges o digital

manipulation, staging and other ethicalofenses. As Wikipedia describes the

controversy:



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Four types o misleading photojournalism

have been alleged as part o the controversy:

photo manipulation using computer sotware,

photo staging by press photographers, photostaging by others at the scene, and alse or

misleading captioning o unstaged photos.

Ultimately, Reuters red Hajj and a

photo editor, the AP disciplined other

photographers, and both organizations put

new practices in place to protect against uture

embarrassments.

The slimming o Katie Couric, September 2006.

Giving celebrities Photoshop makeovers

or magazine covers has become a common

practice in the publishing industrya act

that drew particular attention when the

subject was newly named CBS news anchor

Katie Couric, and the magazine was the CBS

publication Watch!



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Watch! made both Courics ace and body

thinner in its cover image. A CBS spokesman

said the photography department had simply

gotten overzealous and that such an incidentwould not recur.

The resignation o Toledo Blade

photographer Allan Detrich, April 2007.

Allan Detrich resigned ater admitting

he had altered a photo that appeared in

the newspaper. An internal investigationshowed that Detrick had altered dozens o

published images; the Blade said the changes

Mr. Detrich made included erasing people,

tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires,

electrical outlets, and other background

elements rom photographs. In other cases,

he added elements such as tree branches andshrubbery.

Chinas top 10 photo raud, February 2008.

By early 2008, the issue o Photoshop



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manipulation o news images had clearly

become an international phenomenon. In

February, it was discovered that Chinese

photographer Lui Weigiangs award-winningimage o antelopes and a train, poignantly

juxtaposing nature and technology, was a

composite o two separate photographs.

The photo had been named one o the 10

best news images o the year by China state

television in 2006.

O these incidents, the Adnan Hajj/Reuters afair attracted by ar

the most attention because o its political component. Among

its consequences, the afair inspired Brian Ledbetter to start the

blog Snapped Shot, which acts as a photojournalism watchdog

rom Ledbetters politically conservative perspective. Ledbetter

believes there is a steady stream o staged and/or manipulated

photos released by the major wire services, including situa-tions which are either abjectly manipulated by the subjects, set

up ahead o time by media coordinators (as Hezbollah liked to

do), or otherwise not a totally genuine scenario.



32/57


The combined impact o these controversies and others,

says Dennis Dunleavy, the Southern Oregon University associ-

ate proessor, is a loss o public trust that may be impossible to

recapture:

It remains difcult i not impossible or the news industry

to restore public condence in its role as the arbiter o

the so-called truth in a digital age. Trust and credibility

reside at the heart o journalistic integrity and I am araid

that we have burned too many bridges in terms o public

perception.

Adds the University o South Carolinas Weintraub:

The thread o journalistic credibility is stretched thin with

each new revelation o akery in the newsroom. Remember

when journalist Walter Cronkite was the most trusted

public person in America? Today, many people cannot even

distinguish between journalists and entertainers.

Others counter that the ubiquity o digital photography and

Photoshop, which has helped to educate the public about

photo manipulation, has orced a new level o transparency by



33/57


news organizations that can have a positive impact on journal-

isms credibility. Author David Perlmutter believes that, by some

standards, this is the golden age o photojournalistic ethics.

Says Perlmutter:

I you are caught aking a picture today, you are red.

Fity years ago, it was just part o the business. Now

most people have gone to journalism school and learned

ethics. Newsrooms are taking these things more seriously.

Standards are higher than ever.

However, Heather S. Hughes, a ormer staf photographer orthe Daily Press o Newport News, Va., says that most news orga-

nizations are still only concerned about the most egregious

ofensesor the ones caught by the public. While news orga-

nizations may have updated their ethics policies, most manipu-

lation alls into a gray area, where it usually goes unpunished.

Says Hughes:

In general, news organizations are only addressing the

most obvious cases o digital manipulation. It is still not

acceptable to add or remove content, but many are still



34/57


allowing what I consider gray area manipulationheavy

burning and dodging to create mood in a photo.

Some publications have addressed the issue, but most

are allowing it or contest entries and sometimes even orthe pages o the newspaper . . . There are a lot o college

students and recent grads that have seen the manipulation

winning contests, who have no experience in a darkroom,

that see no problem with the practice.

Weintraub says the issue o where to draw the line in photo

manipulation comes down to two questions posed by author

Ken Kobre:

1 Who benets?

2 Would I be comortable telling the reader/viewerwhat Ive done?

Weintraub explains:

The Who benets? test simply asks whether the

manipulation benets the reader/vieweri.e., is it done



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to make the communication

cleareror does it benet

the photographer, subject

or news organization. In themost amous cases, such

as National Geographic

moving the Pyramids, the

manipulation was done not

to help the reader/viewer, but

to make the photographer,

subject or news organizationlook good.

The Comort test means

would I, as a photojournalist/

editor, be comortable telling

my readers/viewers that Ive manipulated the photograph

in some way. I not, that is a signal that I shouldnt be

doing the manipulation.There are other tests, o course. Some people say its OK

to do anything we routinely used to do in the darkroom,

e.g., burning and dodging. But adding pixels, cutting/

Television photojournalists have

always been held less accountable

or their visual reportage, becauseTV has been perceived by the

public as a orm o entertainment

in popular culture. For example,

a print photojournalist can be

red or setting up a picture,but a TV photographer oten

sets up re-enactments.



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pasting, etc., is not OK. The trouble with this approach is

that you can talk yoursel into doing things that dont meet

the two tests Ive described above.

Weintraub points out that one o recent historys most

inamous digital manipulationsthe darkening and blurring

o O.J. Simpsons portrait in the June 27, 1994, cover o Time

could have easily been achieved in a darkroom.

STAGED ShOTS: iS ViDEO A TrOjAn hOrSE

fOr PhOTOjOurnAliSTiC EThiCS?

Tension has always existed between television and print

journalists. While casual observers tend to write this of to

ink-stained newspaper stafers being jealous o the higher

proleand paycheckso their TV brethren, the reality is

that signicant diferences exist in how TV and print news

organizations gather the news.

O particular relevance to photojournalistic ethics, television

news is oten driven by a quick turnaround mentality that can

lead videographers to take shortcuts such as staging shotsa



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clear ethical no-no rom the vantage point o many still photo-

graphers. And in the biggest photojournalism ethics controversy

o recent yearsthe coverage o the 2006 Lebanon War

staged shots were as much a actor as digitally altered images.Television photojournalists have always been held less

accountable or their visual reportage, because TV has been per-

ceived by the public as a orm o entertainment in popular

culture. For example, a print photojournalist can be red or

setting up a picture, but a TV photographer oten sets up re-

enactments, Dunleavy says.

The concern over difering ethical standards most recentlycame to the ore in May, as the National Press Photographers

Association (NPPA) voted on whether to change its name to the

Society o Visual Journalistsa ormal acknowledgement that

the premier association or print photojournalists was now at

least equally ocused on television and videography. While the

proposed name change was deerred until a branding expert

could be brought in to consult with the organization, such achange seems inevitable. This is particularly true given that vir-

tually all photojournalists may soon need to add video to their

repertoires.



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For some print photojournalistswho have viewed the

NPPA Code o Ethics as the closest thing to a Bible the industry

hasthis evolution o the organization is a slap in the ace. In

particular, still photographers say that TV news photographersroutinely stage shots in violation o their interpretation o NPPA

directives, including:

Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.

Respect the integrity o the photographic moment.

While photographing subjects do not intentionally

contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or inuence events.

Television news crews, meanwhile, openly deend the staging

o shots that could get their print brethren red, critics say. As

Travis Lynn writes or the Journal o Mass Media, their justica-

tions all into three categories:

1 Staging or purposes o editing.The conventions

o TV news call or reverse angle shots, cutaways, andother devices that oten require the cooperation o

the subject. They cannot be achieved by simply letting

events unold naturally.



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2 Staging or purposes otime.Subjects are oten

asked to repeat, recreate

or simulate actions that

the videographer missed

or does not have time to

stay and witness in person.

Videographers argue that

this does not necessarily alter

the integrity o the story, but

many print photographers difer on this point.

3 Staging or purposes o storytelling. This is whena videographer stages an event that may or may not

naturally occurand then does not reveal that it has

been staged. Most TV journalists draw the line at this

kind o staging and consider it unethical. A notorious

example o this is Dateline NBCs staged explosion o aGM truck or a 1993 segment on aulty gas tanks.

I cringe at being equated

with videographers who

train their subjects toask What do you want

us to do? instead o

taking the time to allow

reality to unold.



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Jack Zibluk, an associate proessor o journalism at Arkansas

State University and ormer vice president o the NPPA, says

that print photographers must accept that television is a difer-

ent medium with diferent requirements.

Given audience expectations, there are dierent ways to

tell truths, and one is not better than another. A voiceover

narration o a television story is standard in broadcast

ormat, but some still photographers consider additional

sound that hasnt really occurred in real time to be unethical.

In a converged environment, we have to recognize that

dierent practices may be accepted as truthul to the

audience. That doesnt make them unethical. So, while there

are dierent practices, one medium is not more ethical than

another.

But in the minds o many print photojournalists, TVs justica-

tions or setting up shots represent a slippery slopeone that

starts with the relatively innocent staging or editing purposes,but can eventually descend into changing the nature o the story.

Like many print photojournalists, I have questioned whether

our television counterparts are truly committed to the NPPAs



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ethics code, says Hughes, an NPPA member. Many TV pho-

tographers routinely set up shots, have subjects redo things or

pretend to do them because they either missed the shot, want

a diferent angle or want B-roll.

I cringe at being equated with videographers who train their

subjects to ask What do you want us to do? instead o taking

the time to allow reality to unold.

Adds print photojournalist Douglas Tesner, Unless you are

blind you have seen video journalists and multimedia special-

ists or new media specialists routinely setting up shots . . . I do

not want to join that group.Melissa Lyttle, a photojournalist or the St. Petersburg Times,

expresses the same concern: Who let them (video) into our

clubhouse without making them play by our rules . . . namely,

having some ethics?

As the wall separating video rom print has come down sym-

bolically within the NPPA, so it is coming down in practice in

newsrooms across America. Newspapers and other print mediaoutlets are adding video and multimedia packages to their Web

sitesand asking still photographers to do the work. This puts

them in the position o competing directly with TV videographers.



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With photojournalisms leading ethical voice embracing TV

videographers (and by implication, their newsgathering prac-

tices), and print news organizations asking print photojournal-

ists to compete on TVs tur, is it only a matter o time beore

print photojournalists routinely embrace the shot-staging prac-

tices that many o them now consider unethical?

Print photographer Hughes, or one, says she has resisted

this pressure when taking on video assignments:

Having had a taste o the video side, I can understand

the need or B roll and extra ootage that requires them

to get the same action rom multiple angles, which is not

possible as a single videographer. I dealt with it by getting

dierent [shots], because I am not comortable asking

someone to pretend or do over a candid moment. The

problem is TV has no issue with using the staged moment

and presenting it as real . . . You can get the moment and

your B roll without aking anything; you just have to

work a little harder.

At the least, the interpretation o ethical standards is becoming

less clear-cutgenerating considerable conusion. As Karen



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Slattery and Erik Ugland write in The Digital Journalist:

Although it is natural or disagreement about ethical

boundaries in photojournalism to exist, and although it

is expected that proessional norms will evolve over time,photojournalists oten work without a clear understanding

o what their colleagues, employers or audiences expect o

them.

Will engaging in a orm o staging that has typically

been acceptable or routine in one context cause a

photojournalist to be disciplined or red in a dierent

context? Right now that possibility exists.

Then again, perhaps the issue o print vs. TV photojournalism

will soon be moot. The Digital Journalists editor, Dirck Halstead,

points out that most major print news organizations have issued

video cameras to their photographers. He predicts that virtually

all photojournalists will be transitioned to video within just a

ew years.

Things change in lie, horse and buggy was great a

hundred years ago but you wouldnt consider driving a horse



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and buggy on a reeway today. Ive been a photojournalist

now or almost 50 years and I have never been more excited

about the uture o photojournalism than I am today. Its a ar

richer medium and essentially all photojournalists are going

to become lm-makers.



45/57

With photojournalism under attack, is there a need or a new

approach to ethics?

In general, newspapers tend to cling to long-held standards;

practices have changed little in the wake o dramatic changesin the overall landscape. But ocial standards, while strict, are

not enorceable on an industry-wide basis. All news organiza-

tions have their own guidelines or what is right and wrong. A

photojournalist red or an ethical breach at one news outlet

can get a job at another.

Freelance photographers and now citizen photojournal-

istsamateurs snapping pictures o breaking news events ontheir cell phones and digital cameraspresent an even more

dicult challenge. Says Michael Coyne:

4TOwArD A 21ST CEnTury

EThiCAl MODEl



46/57

T o w a r d a 2 1 s T C e n T u r y e T h i C a l M o d e l

Even though some newspapers, news agencies and

news magazines have issued their sta and contract

photographers with strict digital guidelines, it has still

been possible or the occasional manipulated image to

slip through . . . But o more concern is the act that news

organizations advertise or people to send in their images

o an event that they happened to have witnessed and

photographed.

The news groups are doing this mainly to save money,

so they dont have to hire a photojournalist to undertake a

proessional assignment. The problem with hiring amateur

photographers is that there are not always the checks and

balances in place to guarantee that the image has not

been manipulated.

Since its likely that news photography will come rom an ever

widening array o sources, and that ethical standards or pho-

tojournalists will continue to be decentralized among individ-

ual news organization, can the industrys current approach to

ethicsstrict rules with spotty enorcementbe sustained?

Many photojournalists are not overly optimistic, particularly

with the print journalism industry in a state o nancial crisis.



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Says San Francisco-based reelancer Mike Fox:

There is nothing that I think could be done realistically to

make the situation any better . . . I think that news editors

constantly driving their photographers or the next, mostsensational, ront-page image does not help matters. I

wish that the value o photojournalism was based on its

ability to make a dierence to the world and not on its

ability to sell more newspapers.

Zibluk, the ormer NPPA vice president, says the best way to

determine what changes need to be made is to ormally study

the news audience:

Its when we break that social contract between image

maker and the audience that we get in trouble. In a

photojournalistic setting, its saer to tell the truth and the

less manipulation the better . . . The answer lies with those

who do audience measurement. We need to know what

the audience accepts as truth in order to tell it the best way

possible. Thats done through surveys, experiments, ocus

groups, etc.and not gut instinct.



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With or without such studies, a number o recommendations

or improving the status quo are certainly worth considering.

These include the ollowing:

1 Begin using manipulation-detection sotware

industry-wideand

invest in its ongoing

improvement.

In recent years, new technology hasemerged that can help news organi-

zations identiy Photoshop akes. I

ethics are as critical to newspapers

as they say they are, these organiza-

tions must prioritize deploying this

type o technology in the news-

room, to prevent urther erosion ocredibility.

Dr. Hany Farid, who runs the Image Science Group at Dart-

mouth College, is a leading authority on digital orensics. His

In recent years, new technology

has emerged that can help

news organizations identiy

Photoshop akes. I ethics

are as critical to newspapers

as they say they are, these

organizations must prioritize

deploying this type o technology

in the newsroom, to prevent

urther erosion o credibility.




49/57


team has developed some o the most advanced sotware cur-

rently available to detect photo manipulation. Says Farid:

While a good photo editor can spot certain types o

akes, there are many subtle statistical and geometricinconsistencies that are eectively impossible to spot with

the naked eye. And, as photo-editing sotware improves, it

will become increasingly more difcult to detect akes.

We have developed many dierent tools to detect

tampering. One tool detects cloning (copy/paste),

another detects inconsistencies in lighting, another detects

inconsistencies in optical aberrations, and there are manymore. Our general philosophy has been to develop a large

suite o tools, each o which detects a dierent orm o

tampering. Combined, these tools will make it harder to create

convincing orgeries (but, o course, never impossible).

It will always be easier to create orgeries than it will

be to detect them. I predict, however, that we will take

the ability to create convincing orgeries out o the hands

o the average user, and make it more difcult and time

consuming or the expert to create a ake that cannot be

detected.




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Unortunately, media organizations have not yet embraced

manipulation-detection technologies, largely because o the

cost. Farid says he does not know o a single media organiza-

tion employing hisor anyanti-manipulation sotware as

part o its photo editing process.

Even in an age o budgetary panic, it would seem in the

interest o news organizations to make the investments neces-

sary to maintain their most important assettheir authority

and credibility.

2 Embrace the photo illustration as an acceptable

photojournalistic practice.

The photojournalism community needs to become comortable

with the term photo illustrationan industry term indicating

that a photograph has been manipulated. Many photographers

have been dishonest in order to avoid having an image labeled

a photo illustration, or because their editors reuse to publishthem. I the stigma is removed rom the term, photographers

will have less incentive to lie.




51/57


Argues Michael Coyne:

Images used in publications, especially news media

outlets, should have some sort o symbol, sign or

comment notiying the viewer that the images have beenmanipulated i that is the case. Once we are ope n and

honest about which images are manipulated and the term

photo illustration is common practice then there will be

less incentive or the photojournalist to be deceptive.

Let us accept the term photo illustration and

acknowledge that there are certain circumstances where

it has, does and will always happen. It may be that thephotographer eels that this is necessary to show the

viewers the totality o a situation.

Other photojournalists strongly resist this idea, however.Says

longtime newspaper photographer Mark M. Hancock, ormerly

o the Dallas Morning News:

In a news environment, photo illustrations should be

deliberate and obvious. A pig riding a aming motorcycle

while juggling sharks is a photo illustration. Digitally




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removing a soda can rom an image is simply a lie.

Minimizing the photo illustration term and allowing

photojournalists to digitally manipulate images or set

up images is contrary to journalism and truth . . . No

news image is made more important through digital

manipulation. The manipulated images and the people

who create them have cheated authentic photojournalists

and the public.

Adds Weintraub:

Photo illustration, along with other terms, is

meaningless, in my opinionbecause the reading/viewing

public doesnt have a clue what it means. Its a shorthand

way o saying, This photo is a lie, but we want you to

believe it, so we put a disclaimer, usually in tiny type, to

make ourselves eel ethical. Hooey!

Then again, since much o the controversy over photo manip-

ulation has originated with skeptical bloggers taking the timeto study individual pixels in Photoshop, it may help satisy this

increasingly inuential audience to introduce labels like photo

illustration, along with accompanying explanatory detail,

where appropriate.




53/57


Blogger Ledbetter extends this idea to the practice o photo

stagingand the issue o media bias generally:

As ar as improving the industry goes, Id like to see

a stronger distinction between news reporting andadvocacy reporting . . . especially i the news agencies

themselves are as concerned as they claim to be about

more than a mere glossy coating o impartiality in their

reporting. Whenever photographers encounter situations

which are either abjectly manipulated by the subjects . . .

or otherwise not a totally genuine scenario, there probably

ought to be a notation to that eect in the caption.

3 Hold reelancers and citizen journalists to the samestandards as staf photographers.

As photojournalist Daniel Bersak writes:

Sorting out the ethics o the citizen photojournalist

phenomenon is one o the challenges acing the

photojournalism community in the uture. Since the

non-proessional is not bound by a code o ethics (and

may compromise the integrity o an image without even




54/57


knowing it), newsrooms must be cautious when using

images that were taken by the general public.

Bersak points to a number o tests that Al Tompkins o the Poyn-

ter Institute recommends to editors when accepting materialrom non-proessionals, including:

How do you know the image is authentic?

What do you know/need to know about how the image

was captured?

What was the photographer's involvement in the incident

he or she captured?

Will news organizations have the patienceand staf resources

to satisactorily answer these questions in every instance?

Scoopt, the citizen photojournalism arm o Getty Images,

claims to have experts who careully screen images to ensure

no digital tampering has occurred. As Farid points out, however,

tampering is becoming increasingly dicult to detect with the

naked eyeparticularly or understafed organizations tryingto push through photos o breaking events. The staging o

photos, o course, may leave no digital clues whatsoever.




55/57


Clearly, the use o anti-manipulation sotware will be critical

to the credibility o citizen photojournalism. And just as labels

such as photo illustration can provide valuable context when a

photojournalist wishes to alter an image, so too can labeling and

annotation o consumer-generated images.

Ultimately, the public will determine what kind o job

media organizations are doing by either using or not using

their news products. For still photographers, in particular, to

remain relevant, photojournalists must deliver images that

are going to draw and maintain audiences. That is the most

important standard o all or news organizations that wish to

survive in the 21st century.

Many photojournalists are not optimistic about the uture

given the challenges rom without (the decline o print, the rise

o video, an increasingly skeptical public) and within (the ease

o Photoshop manipulation). However, there are reasons or

hope. Research shows that the publics appetite or news and

inormation is greater than ever beore. And the publics love

or, ascination with, and connection to photography is also at

an all-time high, thanks to digital photography, photo-sharing,

and other technological innovations.




56/57

The challenge, then, is or photojournalists to

provide the kind o news images that the public can

enjoy, respectand perhaps even aspire to create

themselves. Photojournalists can only hope to

achieve this by maintaining, and enorcing, ethical

standards that clearly elevate them above their

audiences.



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BiBliOGrAPhy

Bersak, Daniel R. Ethics in Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future. Massachusetts Institute

o Technology. September 2006.

Gee, Catherine. The Demise o Photojournalism. Cardif University School o Journalism,

Media and Cultural Studies. December 15, 2006.

Irby, Kenny. A Photojournalistic Conession. The Poynter Institute. August 22, 2003.

Kobre, Kenneth. Photojournalism, Sixth Edition: The Proessionals Approach. Focal Press, 2008.

Lynn, Travis. Staging in TV News.Journal o Mass Media Ethics. March 1991.

Neubauer, Hendrik. Black Star: 60 Years o Photojournalism. Cologne: Konemann, 1997.

Perlmutter, David D. Photojournalism in Crisis.Editor & Publisher. August 18, 2006.

Ricchiardi, Sherry. Distorted Picture.American Journalism Review. August/September 2007.

Slattery, Karen and Ugland, Erik. The Ethics o Staging. The Digital Journalist. February 2005.

Stepno, Bob. The Evening Graphics Tabloid Reality. University o North Carolina. March 9,

1999.


Documents

Photojournalism, Technology and Ethics