Part 1: Situation Definition.
Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor of the Associated Press presented this years’ Oweida Lecture in Journalism Ethics. Her lecture covered many relevant topics in the world of journalism. Carroll tackled several issues that journalists face when releasing pictures and information to the public.
Journalists are responsible for giving the public a truthful, unbiased, fair representation of what is happening in a particular incident. The way photos can be posed or altered can have a lasting affect on the minds of readers and viewers. The second ethically challenging topic Carroll covered was the safety of journalists and how much risk they should take when landing a story.
Part 2: Analysis.
Carroll used an example of a news photographer who took posed pictures of girls burned by acid to describe how posing photos can make a news photo illegal. The girls’ family was responsible for the burns that covered their faces.
Majority of what we see today is retouched and over edited; we can’t even trust our own eyes. “So much is market-driven, grossly commercialized, sanitized, retouched, overlit, and vetted for safety,” said author Max Gerber in a letter to the editor of Esquire (Gerber, 1). The photographer in the aforementioned example allowed the girls to wear whatever they wanted and to choose the location of their pictures in order to make them feel more comfortable, consequently this led to the photos being posed by the photographer.
Due to the photographers judgment, or lack thereof, the photos could not be used for the news. I disagree with this because the image he was capturing was the girls’ faces. The focus of the story was on the burned faces of these girls. Their choice of clothing and location should not have been brought into question. The photographer maintained a sense of professionalism and comfortability for the young women. I do not believe these pictures were in any way portraying a false story and therefore should be used as legal news photos.
Journalists have to be careful and weigh the pros and cons when it comes to getting stories. The amount of risks a journalist can take brings up another ethical issue. The stories the public wants to hear, the ones that grabs peoples attentions, are the ones that are dangerous to report. It’s a dangerous field especially in light of recent months, but people are called to this profession and with that can come unsafe circumstances especially for freelance reporters.
Part 3: Conclusion.
We live in a fast-moving world where the general public spends .4 seconds looking at a picture before scrolling up. If the picture does not catch your eye, chances are you won’t read it. That’s not to say the media should allow for drastic, altering changes but should allow for some freedoms in certain situations. As mentioned before, I believe the journalist acted with grace and sympathy towards the young girls for what they had been through. He wanted to capture their story and in order to do that the girls needed to feel a sense of safety and comfortabiltiy. I believe that in order to be a journalist you must have a strong morale code and be able to stand for what one believes. I believe severe fabrication of any photos is the same as plagiarized work. Photography can strike a cord with people far more than words at times, and I believe it is an art.
“Photographs give us a stopped moment in time, that is why they have a special power. But photographers and editors have a responsibility to ensure news photos are truthful,” Carroll said. A true gifted photographer will not need to significantly edit a picture to make a powerful statement.
The job of a journalist is to seek the truth and write the truth for the public. The public’s job needs to be coming up with ways in which we can offer protection for these courageous writers who feel called to go all over the world and pursue the truth.
Part 4: References.
Gerber, M.S. (2013). Letter of the Month, Esquire, 160(5), 30
Kathleen Carroll: Executive Editor of the Associated Press