Don’t Expect Privacy When You Protest

Madeline Thomas

mt688819@ohio.edu

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

As soon as a person leaves the comfort of their home, aka private property, they leave behind the privacy that it provides. When a person goes to a protest in a public place, their right to privacy becomes even more limited. Citizen journalism is a new trend that people are still learning to navigate. With that comes a new wave of pictures and videos that can be uploaded to many social media platforms without the subject's permission (s).

Protests aim to create personal connections with the issue at hand, but that connection would not work if protesters' faces were blurred out. According to Claire Coburn and Scott R. Stroud, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, to put a face to a cause, supporters' faces must be seen. As Brent Lewis, a Business Photo Editor for the New York Times, puts it, "...without the faces of the protesters, it becomes a gathering of the faceless. A gather of the nameless. And for a lot of readers and viewers especially in parts of the country and world might not deal with the issue of race and policing, might find it difficult to connect otherwise,".

Anyone who goes out to protest should be aware of the consequences and should educate themselves before they go out. It is essential to understand that any person who protests may be attested, photographed, recorded, fired from their job, and more. The risks can be as significant as the rewards, but only people relinquish their right to privacy.

Yes, it is important to get consent before photographing an individual, but trying to get consent from a group of protesters, especially when the number of people in that group is hundreds or thousands, can be extremely difficult. So, in the end, it is ultimately up to the photographers and editors of media outlets to decide if faces should be blurred and which pictures should be published. The decision is not an easy one, but one that must be made, nonetheless. 

As for the decision to protest, one should also not be made lightly. People should not go to protests just because they are "trendy" or because they want to get free media coverage. Both sides of a protest (the media and the participants) have choices to make and risks to weigh.