Janet Worne - Thoughtful Photography

The Not-So-Great Debate

There seems to be an alarming trend toward sensationalism and bias in the broadcast media. Okay, I know this isn’t a new trend. We are all familiar with the TV tabloid style of news, a genre we see frequently on Fox News. And during the last several months we’ve seen more and more news organizations willing to break with their journalistic ethics and express a profoundly biased view of the news. But journalism reached a new low with the recent debate in Philadelphia between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. ABC moderators, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, spent the first 50 minutes asking the most ridiculous questions, which prompted more than one critic to call the debate “trivial pursuit”. These were questions deserving of supermarket tabloids but certainly not network news. I won’t go into details here but there is an excellent story by Tom Shales of the Washington Post that expresses my feelings perfectly. For the first time in my life I felt an impulse to throw something at my TV.

In my 27 years in newspaper journalism the idea of impartiality in the news was always the lens through which we viewed our stories. We were discouraged from joining political organizations and even discouraged from putting political signs in our yard or bumper stickers on our cars. If we had personal ties to anyone or any group we were covering we were required to recuse ourselves. But here, in this last debate, we had a moderator, George Stephanopoulos, who had previously worked for President Clinton. That is hardly what I would call impartial.

I am not new to covering or watching debates (see below), but the level of anger I felt with this last fiasco was a new experience for me.

CNN's Bernard Shaw was a bit more professional in his moderation of the 2000 vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman in Danville, Kentucky.
 

Is This Ethical?

Never before in the relatively short history of photography has it been easier to manipulate photographic images. With one stroke of the mouse on a computer an entire building can be wiped out leaving no trace. Wish you had three hands? The Photoshop rubber stamp tool can give you an extra limb. Two heads are better than one? No problem. And in less time than it takes to say, "is this ethical?" a computer can get rid of those pesky telephone poles or change the color of your eyes. How often have you wished you could give your boss Spock ears? 

    But in photojournalism, where is the line drawn between acceptable computer touch ups and unethical distortions of the truth? The difficulty in defining where that line should be lies in the fact that everyone has different ideas about what is acceptable and what is not. Some publications push that line by removing distracting telephone lines or coke cans. Extreme examples can be seen on the covers of tabloids in the grocery check out lanes.

    In the newspaper business credibility is everything. Without that we might just as well print cartoon coloring books. Our job is to represent our world and community as truthfully and fairly as we can. The truth isn't always pretty. The truth is sometimes you get coke cans sitting in awkward places or someone walks by and ruins the background of your shot right at the key moment. And the truth is that the sky isn't always as blue as you would like it to be. But when light, composition and subject naturally intersect to create the perfect photo then the truth is magnificent and the flawless moment is captured and held forever.

    Generally speaking, it is considered OK to set up and manipulate photos if they are presented as "illustrations" to be used in a features or business section. But any tampering with the truth in a news section is taboo. It is wrong. Period. In my opinion, even in the features sections, we rely too heavily on illustrations. They should be used sparingly, only when real photos on the subject are unattainable and they should never be made to look real. You should be able to look at an illustration and know it for what it is, an obvious fake. Credibility must be earned over time with integrity and a desire to represent the truth fairly.

Manipulations like this can be fun and artistic but have no place in photojournalism.