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From: "Larry N. Bolch" 
To: 
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Subject: Re: news article
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 13:34:17 -0600
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Stu Turk at sturk{at}telerama.com wrote:

> LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles Times said Wednesday it fired a
> photographer for altering a front page photo of a British soldier and a
> group of Iraqi
> civilians.
>
> In an editor's note in Wednesday editions, the Times said photographer
> Brian Walski acknowledged in a phone call from Iraq that he had used a
> computer to combine elements of two photos to improve the composition.
>
> Journalism ethics forbid changing the content of news photographs, and it
> is specifically barred in the newspaper's policy.

Of two minds on this one. First, altering news photos is very hard to
justify. It blows a papers credibily.

On the other hand, I have photographed events along side a reporter, and
after the reporter's story and my pictures pass by the editor, there is a
feeling that I halucinated the assignment. My pictures were severely cropped
and the cutline the desk wrote is contrary to what the contents of the
picture were. There is no veteran reporter who has not had a story edited
and rewritten by the desk, in order to match the agenda of the paper or that
of the individual editor.

On one paper, the mayor and publisher were feuding. In every picture I took
with the mayor, he got cropped out. Of course this was done with a grease
pencil, not Photoshop, so I guess analogue alterations to change the meaning
of the image are OK.

The view of reality belongs to the photographer and always has - long before
Photoshop. The moment the shutter is pressed can make the subject look
noble, sinister or ridiculous during that 1/125th of a second slice of time.
Lighting, angle and printing influence the message. Perhaps automatic
traffic cameras approach objectivity, but certainly not any sensitive human
being is ever truly objective. Nor would it be desirable to be so.

Any zero tolerance policy destroys the scales of justice. In schools with
such a policy, the plastic knives mothers included with a primary student's
lunch are treated as carrying a weapon. A six year old is nailed as a sex
offender for kissing a friend, that sort of thing. There are no shades of
gray. Intent and consequences are not considered.

I think in this case the altering of the image was stupid - knowing the
paper's policy - but the firing was also draconian. The punishment did not
fit the crime. Two shots in succession of a single incident were combined.

No meaning was changed, the story the combined image told was no different
than either of the source images - only the composition was improved. No one
was demeaned or defamed, no new meaning was created. No viewers would have
been lead astray.

Making the mayor absent from an event where he was presiding is a far
greater transgression - but that was done by editors, so that is all right I
guess.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/

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