The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.
First, the scene in the image was manipulated through stage-managing, a common practice in photojournalism. While the image of the migrant mother, Florence Thompson, appears to the viewer to be a genuine and unprompted look at the hardship and deprivation of a dejected migrant woman. This, of course, was the reality of Ms. Thompson’s personal situation at the time. But the scene itself was micromanaged to appear in a lucid and vivid form in the image, including editing Ms. Thompson’s older children from the image to create the more poignant scene of a mother holding a small child and using a pose in which the woman is looking out into the distance, with the two children told to lo...
... middle of paper ...
...her and the more modern case of Brian Walski demonstrates the importance of ethics in the mass media. With the public dependent on photographers for images that will give an accurate and true representation of the facts, in some cases even leading to such important decisions as giving relief aid, waging war, or determining votes in an election, it is vitally important that journalistic images be true and unaltered likenesses of real persons and events. Even apparently innocent misrepresentations, designed to create a better image or better prove a point, can have serious consequences for the photographer, the subjects of the image, and the public. It is a reminder of the importance of honesty in all professions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(2003, April 2). War with Iraq: Editor’s Note. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/02/news/war-1walski2
Over recent years high profile cases have brought to the forefront, questions of ethics in journalism. The purpose of this thesis will be to investigate the significance and context of a past case in which a journalist and news organization engaged in questionable operations to report the news. The issue being discussed is the considerable attention gained by the local media for the negative role they played in the Sept 27th 1990 “Henry's Publick House” incident. This thesis will address ethical questions within journalism from the viewpoint of the news organization of this case study and their breach in ethics.
In Rushworth Kidder’s book “How Good People Make Tough Choices,” Kidder provides a series of different methods, codes and examples of what being an ethical journalist could mean. He gives examples of different situations where a person’s ethics are tested and what would be a good way to deal with these situations. He starts by explaining the difference between things that are right-versus-right dilemmas, and those that are right-versus-wrong dilemmas.
It’s his compassion for his subjects and his commitment to them that surpasses the act of making a pretty picture. Spending days with his subjects in the slums of Harlem or the hardly developed mountains of West Virginia, he immerses himself into the frequently bitter life of his next award-winning photo. Often including word for word text of testimonials recorded by junkies and destitute farmers, Richards is able to provide an unbiased portrayal. All he has done is to select and make us look at the faces of the ignored, opinions and reactions left to be made by the viewer. Have you ever been at the beach safely shielded by a dark pair of sunglasses and just watched?
I glance amusedly at the photo placed before me. The bright and smiling faces of my family stare back me, their expressions depicting complete happiness. My mind drifted back to the events of the day that the photo was taken. It was Memorial Day and so, in the spirit of tradition my large extended family had gathered at the grave of my great grandparents. The day was hot and I had begged my mother to let me join my friends at the pool. However, my mother had refused. Inconsolable, I spent most of the day moping about sulkily. The time came for a group picture and so my grandmother arranged us all just so and then turned to me saying, "You'd better smile Emma or you'll look back at this and never forgive yourself." Eager to please and knowing she would never let it go if I didn't, I plastered on a dazzling smile. One might say a picture is worth a thousand words. However, who is to say they are the accurate or right words? During the 1930s, photographers were hired by the FSA to photograph the events of the Great Depression. These photographers used their images, posed or accurate, to sway public opinion concerning the era. Their work displayed an attempt to fulfill the need to document what was taking place and the desire to influence what needed to be done.
Despite the similarities in the two texts presented by the authors and photographers, their work is presented in two various ways. Agee and Evans project was done after living with three tenant families and Evans photographs are completely separate from Agees text. There are not any captions or names and they do not tell us where the photos are taken or who the people in the pictures are. Lange and Taylor’s project on the other hand is written in a way that helps us read the photographs and it is easier to see the connections between the text and pictures. The captions underneath the photos are based on words formulated by the people in the picture. However, the photos that do not have any people in them still have captions, but in this case we can assume that someone has told the photographer or author what to write for each photo. By this method the true meaning of how the turmoil during this period affected the people in question is more precisely illustrated because it includes the words uttered by the people thems...
Photographers had begum to document and publicize the issues of the race problem and the struggle for equal rights in the United States in the early 1900s. Early photographs documented protests against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and captured protest...
An image has the explicit power of telling a story without saying any words, that’s the power behind a photo. A photo tends to comes with many sides to a story, it has the ability to manipulate and tell something differently. There is a tendency in America, where explicit photos of war or anything gruesome occurring in the world are censored for the public view. This censorship hides the reality of our world. In “The War Photo No One Would Publish” Torie DeGhett centers her argument on censorship, detailing the account of graphic Gulf War photo the American press refused to publish. (73) DeGhett argues that the American public shouldn’t be restrained from viewing graphic content of the war occurring around the world. She believes that incomplete
Taking photographs may seem simple, but being a photographer is more than browsing through the viewfinder and pushing the exposure button. A photographer needs to know how to analyze the scene, speak in words that language cannot, and reach to the souls of people through a picture. During the Great Depression, many photographers captured the scenes of poverty and grief. However, there was only one photographer that truly captured the souls of Americans. According to Roy Stryker, Dorothea Lange "had the most sensitivity and the most rapport with people" (Stryker and Wood 41). Dorothea Lange was a phenomenal photographer that seized the hearts of people during the 1930s and beyond, and greatly affected the times of the Great Depression.
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
Social realist art, which dominated in the US during the Depression, communicates the concerns of the masses: artists question the treatment of the poor and praise American values embodied in ordinary people. In painting, Thomas Hart Benton’s murals depict an extravagance juxtaposed alongside honest, hardworking people, calling into question the actions and greed leading up to the Great Depression. Benton’s murals in both subject and medium penetrate the American political landscape, purporting such ideal values as hardworking and honesty. In photography, Dorothea Lange captures in the flesh the realities of the working poor. In her photograph Migrant Mother (1936) Lange portrays simultaneously the oppression and resilience of the working
Newton, Julianne H. The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Print.
In extreme situations, journalists choose the angle they can find, tick the boxes to the news worthiness, but never having a stand. According to Kempf, journalists fulfill certain criteria of newsworthiness and fake empirical evidence, which implements propaganda and in the journalists’ defense “that it did not matter the pictures were faked since they only showed what people already ‘knew’ and since they served the goal of opening the eyes of the public” (Kempf 2002, p. 60). Various examples from the War on Terror, where journalists and reporters would fake evidence just to gain more audiences but examples like this could elevate the issues, and it is as if this responsibility of Journalism of Attachment only adds fuel to the fire and this is done in the name of peace (Kempf 2002).
= = [ IMAGE] Major Essay Topic: [ IMAGE ] Journalism and the Code of Ethics Introduction = = =
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.
"Journalism Ethics Online Journalism Ethics Gatekeeping." Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .