By: Savannah Okray
so278618@ohio.edu
Images and videos produced in the news can be powerfully influential. They can help people comprehend situations that they don't completely understand and provide insight that words can't.
Images and videos hold a lot of weight when people decide what happened in a particular situation in the news. Still, it's important to note that images and videos don't always tell the whole story. With the rise of new editing software, it has become much more accessible than ever before to manipulate pictures and videos. This practice makes readers question if the photographer has good intentions or if his goal is to make a couple of bucks.
Providing context
According to The Society of Professional Journalism's code of ethics, truth is the first and foremost thing to consider when writing a news story. In one of their suggestions given, they said that it's essential to "provide context" and goes on to say that this can be done by "taking special care not to represent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story."
Providing context can be especially important in photography because a picture is just a snapshot of what is happening at the time. Unfortunately, we don't see what happened before or after the event. This practice could lead to the situation being misrepresented. For example, fake news can go viral on a video that showed a group of Kentucky Catholic school kids in Washington D.C. at a March for Life protest. According to The Atlantic, the video represented a young man wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat who can be seen "mocking American Indians who participated in an Indigenous Peoples, protest taking place the same day."
Many people were quick to judge this photo and denounced the kid in it as "brazenly racist." However, it wasn't until a few days later, when another video circulated, showing a Black Hebrew Israelite protest group the same day antagonizing people of "all stripes," that people realized that they weren't being shown all sides of the story.
Combating falsehoods
It has become easier than ever to take pictures out of context in today's world. Today, people are even using software to help them manipulate images to represent something completely different from what's intended. The Nieman Lab noted, "How the Wall Street Journal is preparing its journalists to detect deep fakes gives a couple of ways to help its readers recognize these kinds of distorted images to make sure they are receiving the most trustworthy information from their news source." Some of these suggestions include:
- Examining the source
- Finding older versions of footage
- Examining the footage
Although these suggestions are not full proof, it's a place anyone can start when trying to decide if their news source is one that they should trust. Photos and videos have transformed our lives and given us information and insights that haven't been seen before, but it's important to remember that there is a cost that comes with this kind of power.
Truth is the most critical value in journalism, and this doesn't stop at the written word. It's the job of a journalist/photojournalist to show what is happening in our world to keep us more informed on how to live our lives, and if we lose that, it could become detrimental to our society.
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