Journalist and Photographers

One common issue for journalist and photographers is that their professions lack certified ethical standards. Medical Doctors, Security Analyst and other professionals have certified standards guiding their conduct. American journalist are protected by the constitution but often abuse this public trust by presenting twisted and biased information dressed as facts. As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not. Wouldn't this be a positive step in turning the tide of truth back to our favor. For instance, a few seconds taken to add a note to the back of our work about subject alterations and whether the subject was staged or found could bring long-term benefits in the form of public trust.

Ethics in Photography, truth, manipulation; how much disclosure is needed?

Rod Witten said:

One common issue for journalist and photographers is that their professions lack certified ethical standards. Medical Doctors, Security Analyst and other professionals have certified standards guiding their conduct. American journalist are protected by the constitution but often abuse this public trust by presenting twisted and biased information dressed as facts. As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not. Wouldn't this be a positive step in turning the tide of truth back to our favor. For instance, a few seconds taken to add a note to the back of our work about subject alterations and whether the subject was staged or found could bring long-term benefits in the form of public trust.

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Rod you raise an important issue. What was it that made this topic come to the fore right now?

Ethics in our photography covers so many things.

Truth
Competence:
Honesty
Professionalism
Accountability
Openness
Sampling other peoples pictures for objects, textures
Using pictures from the web

Frank Reiter is concerned about what the pictures shows and how subtle changes may or may not be an honest expression of one's memory or subjective vision. He asks about Truth in Photography and goes over the factors which we change while thinking we are still telling the "Truth".

Nick Rains, a fine landscape photographer, embraces a concept of Truth which guides his work. We have extensively debated this here. We have creative expression versus truth. These are serious subjects, however not of the same consequence of what we have to face from now on. These issues for pictures of social value, so far deal with pictures for our pleasure or entertainment. However we are also seeing manipulation, used in both the technical and perjorative sense, in Journalism as we discussed here previously with vivid examples of cut and paste to create war casualties and magnify crisis for propaganda purposes.

So Rod it would seem we have a lot of issues to cover.

I think this is a very important area to cover.

Thanks for bringing this up!

I'm so glad to welcome you here right now!

Asher

Rod Witten said:

... As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not. Wouldn't this be a positive step in turning the tide of truth back to our favor. For instance, a few seconds taken to add a note to the back of our work about subject alterations and whether the subject was staged or found could bring long-term benefits in the form of public trust.

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Rod,

In rushing to reply and lay claim that we also see and try to address this moral and social problem, I failed to address your simple question and in part, fine solution. Yes, we should add a note on the fictive nature of our work. For the design of this, the how and extent, suggestions are welcome.

It's valuable that we should be held to task!

Asher

Ethics in News Photography

Rod Witten said:

One common issue for journalist and photographers is that their professions lack certified ethical standards. Medical Doctors, Security Analyst and other professionals have certified standards guiding their conduct. American journalist are protected by the constitution but often abuse this public trust by presenting twisted and biased information dressed as facts. As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not. Wouldn't this be a positive step in turning the tide of truth back to our favor. For instance, a few seconds taken to add a note to the back of our work about subject alterations and whether the subject was staged or found could bring long-term benefits in the form of public trust.

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Rod there is a set of ethics that guides journalists. Basicly where it comes to photographers it is "do not alter the image" . Most news organizations use the following as their guidelines http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/ethics.html .

Staged, altered photos will normally get a photographer fired when discovered. Read this it will give your additional info http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/self-training_resources/eadp_report/photo_changes.html

Bottom line any change to alter the photo after the shutter clicks is a lie. All of this only applies to news type publications.

Rod Witten said:

One common issue for journalist and photographers is that their professions lack certified ethical standards. Medical Doctors, Security Analyst and other professionals have certified standards guiding their conduct. American journalist are protected by the constitution but often abuse this public trust by presenting twisted and biased information dressed as facts. As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not. Wouldn't this be a positive step in turning the tide of truth back to our favor. For instance, a few seconds taken to add a note to the back of our work about subject alterations and whether the subject was staged or found could bring long-term benefits in the form of public trust.

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Rod: I don't find photographers to be more trangressive than anyone else. Joseph Mengele was a doctor; I don't think he was very concerned with the Hippocratic Oath. When I was training to be a corpsman at Bethesda Naval Medical Center during the Vietnam War, I heard two plastic surgeons discussing how great war was for advancements in the field. And then lawyers, well....and Wall Street CEOs who behave like sociopaths.

I think most photographers are good people who are concerned to do the right thing. If I go to an accident and someone is gravely injured, I'm not going to take pictures; I'm going to give emergency first aid if I can. If I am in a foreign country and the photographs I take might endanger someone if published, I will not publish them, nay, probably not even take them. I run across this with writing when I have to disguise identities to keep someone from coming to harm.

It is more likely that photographers will be hassled for doing things someone perceives to be predatory, when they are not. We've all run into the hysteric who thinks we're going to put them on the front of National Enquirer, when they're not even in the shot.

The paparazzi are parasites and low lifes and don't even take very good pictures. I hesitate to call them photographers, and I really don't care when an angry actor punches one of them out.

Maybe raising the issue, as you have done, is a way of coming up with a code of ethics, perhaps one that does not obstruct first amendment rights.

Rod Witten said:

As photographers, don't we owe our audience transparency, whether they want it or not.

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Hi Rod,

Nothing personal, but I don't think we do.

Don't get me wrong, I hold ethics high, and I cringe at some of the invasions of privacy I see displayed under the umbrella of street photography.

However, take a step back and rephrase the question from a legal point of view. Aren't we guilty until claimed innocent? A resounding NO should be the answer.

Bart

Bart,

Or ..... a criminal is not a criminal unless caught? I'm not trying to judge the behavior of photographers. I am however, trying to suggest a means for improving the dialog between the photgrapher and their random audiences. From recent visits to galleries, I've seen very few photographers sharing information about the work regarding what is fact and what is not. I know that as a viewer, I would like to know, for example, whether the child staring poignantly into the water fountain was posed or indeed caught by the photographer in a moment of meditation.... or whether the full moon was truely located from that certain perspective in the landscape or was it PS'd. I believe that we are demeaning our own profession by not providing transparency.

Bill,

I was not aware of the NPPA's Code of Ethics. It is reassuring to see how detailed it is and also to know that the one arm of photography that the public certainly would insist on abiding by a code would be photojournalist. However, it is my understanding from other professional journalist (not photojournalists) that other forms of journalist don't have a code other than those that their employers set to protect their pocketbooks from the lawyers.
Thanks for the education about the NPPA

Rod Witten said:

Bart,

Or ..... a criminal is not a criminal unless caught? I'm not trying to judge the behavior of photographers. I am however, trying to suggest a means for improving the dialog between the photgrapher and their random audiences. From recent visits to galleries, I've seen very few photographers sharing information about the work regarding what is fact and what is not. I know that as a viewer, I would like to know, for example, whether the child staring poignantly into the water fountain was posed or indeed caught by the photographer in a moment of meditation.... or whether the full moon was truely located from that certain perspective in the landscape or was it PS'd. I believe that we are demeaning our own profession by not providing transparency.

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Hi Rod,

With all due respect, I don't subscribe to this point of view. We have discussed this matter at least on two-three different occasions here in OPF, just do some searching if you want.

My take is, unless a photograph is meant for documentary, legal evidence or news purposes, there is no obligation or whatsoever to provide any explanations about aspects such as whether it has been posed or not. I am not saying that we should lie about it when we are asked. I am saying that there is no obligation. If I show a picture of a tree root which has been horizontally mirrored because I think it is more pleasing, why should I be obliged to mention this when I share this picture here in OPF? Does it matter at all? I don't think so.


Cheers,

Rod Witten said:

Bart,

Or ..... a criminal is not a criminal unless caught?

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That's the same wrong premise. One isn't a criminal UNLESS proven guilty, at least that's how we practice law in this part of the world. Besides, what's criminal in one country (say torture) is practiced in others by governments (despite the law), so a lot depends on one's ethical framework of reference.

I'm not trying to judge the behavior of photographers. I am however, trying to suggest a means for improving the dialog between the photgrapher and their random audiences.

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Which is fine, although pretty hard to do across a worldwide scope of ethical values. So I'm not sure ethics is the right angle.

From recent visits to galleries, I've seen very few photographers sharing information about the work regarding what is fact and what is not. I know that as a viewer, I would like to know, for example, whether the child staring poignantly into the water fountain was posed or indeed caught by the photographer in a moment of meditation....

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Good! Now what if that is exactly the question that the artist wanted to raise, ... without answering if for the viewer. That's where the viewer's frame of reference is allowed to take the image and create a world of its own. Do note that that is something different than leaving only question marks.

"What on earth was the photographer thinking" is a sign of non-communication, an unclear message, or an unreceptive audience. Leaving room for interpretation (with a bit of guidance from the artist) is something else, more subtle.

It's something like explaining the clue of a good joke ... IMHO

Bart

Clues, messages and meaning in art and photography.

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

"What on earth was the photographer thinking" is a sign of non-communication, an unclear message, or an unreceptive audience. Leaving room for interpretation (with a bit of guidance from the artist) is something else, more subtle.

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Bart,

For sure, what you say is highly applicable for almost all art. In fact, almost all the time.

Still, rarely in art we do have pictures and sculpture that utterly do not communicate! They do seem to live on their dowry of inherent form and or beauty. In fact, they are empty of message. The artist, perhaps, has used creativity to make a gymnasium for the spectators own feelings, thinking, imagination and There no clues and none needed. There is no narrative. Yes there may be form, however, there's no meaning except we can be drawn in and perhaps frame our own questions and as we wander around, bouncing against the dimensions of the art. We might even provide our own answers and revelations. Now if someone can make a photograph like that, I'd put it on the highest level.

Asher

Bart,

Conclusions by law are after the fact and often subjective, wrong or ineffective. When is a perpetrator of crime a criminal in the eyes of the victim? We have many laws that are not enforced except when they are convenient for the administrators of society. Innocent victims die daily as the result of politicians in communities not dealing with the root historical cause. What are a few deaths as long as we continue to get our lobby money from the the whiskey and gun companies. Are these victims of nature or crimes?

I yield the field to real justice, may it happen once in awhile. :=)

Rod,

We have a lot of good photographers who's worst actions on a bad day are to center the composition, crop too close or to post images without careful enough selection. Most people here are the salt of the earth, considerate folk who would help out anyone else in the tour bus.

Asher

Cem,

....and I thought that my root image "inverted abstract, digitally altered in post processing" was unique - oh well :=)
I understand your position and it may not matter. However, it would be my preferrence that Art not turn into some short variation of "artificial" at least as it applies to non-commercial photography. If it does matter, I guess that I would prefer to be one that had a history of disclosing subject alterations or staging.

Thanks for the response

My kind of people.