Photoshopping the News, Where's the line?

Raichel Jenkins
rj790813@ohio.edu

It's no secret that society has an addiction, and it isn't to the news. Photoshop is so common nowadays it is automatically assumed to be present in every photo we see in media. I find myself looking at photos of women in magazines and wondering if their noses are even close to the shape presented. I see a news photo of protestors standing outside a gate and wonder if there's really as many as the photo leads you to believe.

But news outlets don't edit photos right? Not always.

A famous example that comes to mind is Benito Mussolini triumphantly holding a sword on a horse. The horse handler holding the animal steady while Mussolini thrust his sword to the sky was edited out giving an entirely different look to the photo.

Images of Benito Mussolini via TwistedSifter

While this is undoubtedly propaganda, it still begs the question, can we edit the photos in the news?


Staging

According to the New York Time's article on photo manipulation, half of the professional photographers had admitted to staging a published photo with 12 percent admitting to doing it over half the time they took photos. Whether it's because they've arrived too late to an event and are trying to recreate a scene or they simply want to prove an agenda, staging photos is simply bad journalism.

It goes directly against one of the forefront rules in the NPPA's code of ethics which explicitly states that intentionally altering or influencing events being captured is unethical.

Personally, I see no reason that a photo should be staged. As someone who's there to report what's happening, you can't do that honestly if you've moved a subject closer to the action or moved them in the direction of a more moving scene. The only leeway here is if the lighting it too poor for a quality shot and you move them just enough to get the same feel with better light.


Photoshopping

How often is the news straight up altered? Apparently, often enough to cause speculation. A 1982 cover of National Geographic infamously edited the pyramids closer together to fit the cover better. While that may seem semi-harmless to some, there's far more sinister examples. The most famous is Time Magazine altering O.J. Simpson's face to be a darker shade in an article discussing his crimes. Critics argued it made Simpson appear more animalistic and sinister.

Here the ethical code is blurry. No one wants to see a blurry photo with a stray blade of grass or poor lighting. According to AP News, dodging and burning, cropping, turning images black and white are acceptable. However, removing a subject's red eye, changing the saturation, color or intensity of any elements, especially the background is not.

I completely agree with this conservative ethics code as it clearly states what's allowed and what isn't. Lighting does so much to affect the "lens" with which the viewer understands a photograph. While it's rare for other publications to uphold such strict views on photoshopping, I'm inclined to agree with AP News that it ensures transparency and believability.