Cameron Robertson
cr102019@ohio.edu
With this generation being so dependent on technological advancements, newsrooms have quickly had to adapt as well. News has become more easily distributed with things such as phones and social media, but this change has also put an emphasis on expressing news visually too. A lot of the time when viewing news on apps like Instagram or Twitter, it is accompanied by a photo or video that is the most important piece.
I can think of hundreds of examples when I saw a piece of news that was contained to an image or video on an app like Twitter. Often, they have no accompanying context besides a quick sentence or two, leaving me to form my own conclusion from the visual. While visuals are great for getting news out there, the negatives that can come with situations like this can be heavy.
The first potential negative with visual imagery in news is photo manipulation. Take this example of the TIME cover featuring O.J. Simpson's mugshot vs the NewsWeek cover of the same photo. The photos are much different in the two covers, despite being the exact same. That's because the TIME cover has been altered to make the context and the tone to appear even darker than the original story suggests.
This is the problem that exists. When big media companies are able to use photo manipulation to alter or push a certain context, it can lead the readers or consumers of information in a certain direction. As ethical journalists, the goal is not to lead people to conclusions, but to simply present the facts and let the public conclude what they may.
As seen in this article by Neiman Reports, another problem deals with graphic imagery in news. Often, major news will have to cover tragic stories, especially in this day and age. This leads to very graphic and heartbreaking images that are both iconic and questionable. It calls into question which need is greater: to use the images to drive the importance of the news, or to not use the images in order to avoid the graphic nature pushing people away.
The last issue deals with video manipulation, highlighted in this article from The Atlantic. Just like with photos, videos can be manipulated even more to construct certain narratives. The framing and length of videos can lead the public to draw certain conclusions from the situations even though that may not be the truth. Not only that, but video editing such as "deepfakes" can cast even more doubt on videos truth and validity.
I think that visuals are great and are effective in the conveying of news and information, but these potential negatives certainly need to be addressed and the public needs to be informed to try and eliminate the negatives. With social media, visuals are only going to become more commonplace in news, and it is our duty as journalists to try and curb the negatives that can come along with them.
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