A Doctored Picture's Worth A Million Good News Stories

Sarah Holt

sh398506@ohio.edu

Honestly before I read these articles, I had never given much thought to photo-doctoring and its effect on media ethics. I guess I placed photos in a different journalistic category in my head, but now I realize that I was wrong. If a picture's worth a thousand words--than it is just the same as a news story. Therefore its content needs to be as ethical and true as the story it accompanies.

I believe that what Bob DeMay of the Akron Beacon Journal said is very true. That one bad picture can sow a seed of doubt that could damage someones trust in an organization forever. And I wonder if a photographer realizes the damage he could potentially inflict by simply removing a tree branch or a pair of legs. He/she could be damaging the credibility of thousands of good news stories and photographs. Because all it takes is one negative impression to ruin perception for a long time.

There is a line though. Let's call it a freak-out line. If someone removes an actual object from the picture, doctors a head on a different body or changes someones skin color--I believe they have crossed the line. But if they simply deepen the contrast or color-correct a little, I don't see that as a reason to freak-out. Don't journalists pour over exactly what words to use and change them? Simply changing the exposure to make the appearance more appealing is likening change a word from "rain" to "precipitation."

It seems that photojournalists must be upheld to the same standards as other journalists. If you intentionally change something from true to false--you must pay the consequences. The National Press Photographers Association has a decent Code of Ethics that you can view here. It seems that they are working toward fixing the problem—and I believe awareness of the consequences has increased since incidents such as the Detrich scandal.