Brouhaha over altered US DoD photo

[Doug Kerr]

Those interested in the matter of "truth in photography" may be interested in this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7738342.stm

It discusses the matter of the US Department of Defense releasing, to AP, a photo of recently promoted General (four-star) Ann Dunwoody showing her in front of a US flag, which, it turns out, was composited into the original image.

Gen. Dunwoody's face also seems to have undergone some "skin beautification".

[Michael Fontana]

Doug
the DoD looks to havea license of PS, too.

critic: the flag is to sharp to be real; maybe they used focus stacking ;-)

[Bill Miller]

Those interested in the matter of "truth in photography" may be interested in this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7738342.stm

It discusses the matter of the US Department of Defense releasing, to AP, a photo of recently promoted General (four-star) Ann Dunwoody showing her in front of a US flag, which, it turns out, was composited into the original image.

Gen. Dunwoody's face also seems to have undergone some "skin beautification".

Doug,

The difference here is this is not a news photo. It was issued as a PR/Press Release, no different than the stock photos of a City official, business executive or authors photo on book cover. From an ethics standpoint this photo would be exempt, as it is PR not a depiction of a news event.

[Colleen Vermillion]

The difference here is this is not a news photo.

That's my take on it also. Now if they had put an eye patch or scars on her to make her look tougher, I might quibble, but they just wanted to give an attractive photo to go along with the announcement. To compare polishing up a PR photo with Iran doctoring their misfired missile photo is ridiculous.

-Colleen

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Bill,

The difference here is this is not a news photo. It was issued as a PR/Press Release, no different than the stock photos of a City official, business executive or authors photo on book cover. From an ethics standpoint this photo would be exempt, as it is PR not a depiction of a news event.

Of course. My take as well.

I gave the link since the article revolved around a concept that has been of keen interest here, not because of any concern I had about the photo.

Best regards,

Doug

[Colleen Vermillion]

Just to stir the pot a little....

What I find most disturbing about it is this "zero tolerance" trend. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the result of applying the rule is, we must not make any exceptions. I have a deep seated contempt for mandatory minimums and any other law or policy that doesn't allow room for judgment calls. I suppose if you lay out the rule or policy clearly and enforce it without exception you could say it was fair, but I don't think you can have justice in that situation.

-Colleen

[Bill Miller]

Just to stir the pot a little....

What I find most disturbing about it is this "zero tolerance" trend. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the result of applying the rule is, we must not make any exceptions. I have a deep seated contempt for mandatory minimums and any other law or policy that doesn't allow room for judgment calls. I suppose if you lay out the rule or policy clearly and enforce it without exception you could say it was fair, but I don't think you can have justice in that situation.

-Colleen

Basically the "zero tolerance" only applies to journalism and documentary work. It any type of manipulation is allowed then there is a distrust of the photos. Like Iran's photo of the missiles, they added a couple to make it look tougher. Another example were the photo's Reuters news agency had from Adnan Hajj. This photographer doctored the photos he sent in. Reuters ended up removing over 900 of his submissions. This is a good example of why there is "zero tolerance".

If you really would like to see some good examples http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2008-22,GGLJ:en&q=fake+photos+news. After viewing a few of these examples lets see if you still feel the same about hard fast rules.

[Colleen Vermillion]

Basically the "zero tolerance" only applies to journalism and documentary work.

But that's not the case with AP. They don't care that it was only a PR photo.

For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image. Santiago Lyon, AP

Of course it begs the question why the DoD can't get the highest ranking woman in the US military a proper PR photo. Four star general is one of those "I'm kind of a big deal" positions :)

-Colleen