Week 6: Thoughts on Ch. 2 of "Image Ethics in the Digital Age"

"In order to demonstrate their abiding commitment to honesty, photojournalists, news editors, and news publishers have begun to institute a professional codes, standards governing the use of digital imaging technology." (p. 33)

Essentially, the chapter goes through the different debates as to what constitutes acceptable, ethical and allowable forms of image manipulation. Journalists debate over how much an image can be changed and still be called 100% accurate. Note here the use of "accurate" - one can't say truthful because truth is subjective, and "representational" doesn't work either because a photo can represent something, but it might not be the thing or event itself, merely a stand-in.

I took journalism in middle and high school, both for newspaper and yearbook. The rules that we adhered to were that we could only adjust the following afterwards on a computer:

• resolution (dpi, or dots per inch)
• color correction
• contrast and saturation
• greyscale

Strictly prohibited were:

• cropping (can change meaning, as well as make it difficult to upload into the spread
• horizontal flipping (at times tempting when subjects weren't facing the gutter)
• airbrushing (the staff was often tempted to do this to their own photos - pimply mug shots!)
• editing out of any kind

The one exception when people were edited out was for the annual senior photo when the whole class assembles. Invariably, there was always someone who wore a shirt with a swear word or flipped off the camera, or who was not a senior, who had to be deleted. And in that case, our yearbook advisor did the photoshopping. 

In high school, our #1 ranked nationally newspaper The Nexus had plenty of digital manipulation, but it was, as Chapter 2 says, very clear that the photo had been combined with digital art. We had a byline for the photograph, and one for what we termed "photo illustration." It was always very clear, usually combining visual art or a computer graphic of some kind with a photo. As far as manipulating images with the camera's own functions as you were taking the picture, everything was fair game for us. Motion blur, zoom, depth of field, tilt, black and white, strange angles or apertures, you name it. Our newspaper focused on photojournalism as stories and narratives, so I think we were allowed to be more adventurous and artistic when it came to taking interesting photos to tell a story. 

As far as policy, I think a most hands-off approach as possible is best. If the camera can do it in the moment (like the hula hoop motion blur example) I think it should be allowed. Minimal color correction or saturation or contrast can be tweaked to improve image quality. But I don't think that things like focus should be messed with. Even cropping should be used sparingly, as it can greatly change the meaning of a photo, merely by surrounding context and atmosphere. 

Here's a photo I've always liked, commonly captioned "What Media Tells Us." Relates to cropping:

And another one about cropping:

And a link to a fascinating but terrifying album of photos showing EXTREME but low-tech photo manipulation by the Soviets during the war: http://imgur.com/gallery/GmPdh