Ethical decisions in Photojournalism
Legal Considerations in Photojournalism
Here are some potentially troublesome situations you might encounter. Discuss what you think is the correct answer legally and discuss how you personally might handle it.
1. If you take pictures of someone in their home with a hidden camera, could you be sued for invasion of privacy? (yes)
2. Is it legal for you to photograph a celebrity walking along a city street, even if they don't want to be photographed? (yes, because it's a public street)
3. If you photograph Ricky Martin driving down the street in a new BMW, could BMW use one of your pictures in an advertisement? (no, they need written permission)
4. You are editor of a feature magazine, and you need a picture of some troubled teens to illustrate a story. Your photographer goes by the high school and shoots some pictures of some teens waiting outside for their rides. You print one of the pictures, only to find out later that these were some of the school's top scholars. Could they sue you successfully? (yes, because you potentially hurt their reputations)
5. , You take a picture of woman with her dress blowing up, showing her undergarments underneath. Although her face is not visible, her children are next to her. Since she was in public view, can your editor run it without fear of being sued? (no, she could successfully prove that the photo was embarrassing but not newsworthy)
6. You're at the hospital visiting a sick friend and have a chance to get a photo of a local celebrity being wheeled into the X-ray room. This would be of great interest to your readers. You take the pictures and turn one into your editor. Can she legally run it? (no, the law protects people privacy in hospitals -- she would need written permission to run it)
7. . You see a bad car accident and begin taking photos immediately, of the smashed cars, of the victims being tended to and put into the ambulance, etc. The police at the scene order you to stop. As a representative of the media, can you legally continue? (yes) If so, are there any limits to what you can shoot? (you cannot take pictures of a victim in an ambulance)
8. From the street, you photograph two teenagers kissing on a front porch. Even if you did not ask their permission, can your editor legally run it? (yes, legally it's OK since anything on a public street is fair game, but ethically you might decide against it)
9. . There has been a bad fire in a person's home, and you want to take pictures inside the house. The owner is not home, and the police and firefighters do not object. Do you, as a representative of the media, have a right to enter the house, or would you be trespassing? (you have a right to enter the house and take pictures)
10. You're shopping in a grocery store and witness a woman cut by a broken pickle jar. She sees your camera and asks you to photograph her wound. Can you legally take a picture? (yes) What if the manager sees you and asks you to stop? (you must stop since you're on their private property) What if the manager demands you turn your film over to her? (you don't have to -- that's your property)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Ethical Considerations in Photojournalism
Pair 1
Photographer: You are working with a reporter on a story about a coach who holds some national records for weightlifting. You still need a shot of him working out, so you arrange to meet him at the gym and take pictures of him lifting weights just as he normally does. Make an argument for running your photo.
Photo editor: Do you run this set-up photo? Why or why not?
Pair 2
Photographer: A baby left in a locked car died from the heat. You heard about it on a police scanner and were able to get a picture of the policeman taking the baby out of the car.
Photo editor: Do you run this as a warning to other parents? Why or why not?
Pair 3
Photographer: A fire escape collapses during a fire, plunging a woman to her death. A child who also falls miraculously survived.You get a picture of them in mid-air, just as the fire escape gives way. The photo is a potential Pulitzer Prize winner.
Photo editor: Do you run this photo of a woman falling to her death? Why or why not?
Pair 4
Photographer: A woman takes off her clothes in protest of being denied entrance to a building. You get a picture of her protest.
Photo editor: Do you run this photo of a nude woman? Why or why not?
Pair 5
Photographer: During a news conference, an important political figure makes an obscene gesture at some hecklers in the crowd. You take the picture and turn it into your editor.
Photo editor: This is definitely newsworthy but potentially offensive. Do you run it? Why or why not?
Pair 6
Photographer: A man notifies the press that a newsworthy event will be taking place at a certain time and location. He makes a statement protesting a government action, then douses himself with gasoline and lights a match. You get some dramatic pictures of the event, potential prize winners.
Photo editor: Should you run the picture because it's newsworthy or deny the protester the publicity he was seeking? Explain your decision.
Pair 7
Photographer: You photograph a family grieving over their son who drowned in a local canal. You capture them at the moment the authorities unzip the body bag for them to make identification of him.
Photo editor: Do you run this to urge other families to be cautious or respect the privacy of their grief?
Pair 8
Photographer: You photograph two students exchanging money and a bag of something. You realize this would be a great photo to go with a story your staff is doing on drugs on campus.
Photo editor: Do you run this? Why or why not?
Here are some potentially troublesome situations you might encounter. Discuss what you think is the correct answer legally and discuss how you personally might handle it.
1. If you take pictures of someone in their home with a hidden camera, could you be sued for invasion of privacy? (yes)
2. Is it legal for you to photograph a celebrity walking along a city street, even if they don't want to be photographed? (yes, because it's a public street)
3. If you photograph Ricky Martin driving down the street in a new BMW, could BMW use one of your pictures in an advertisement? (no, they need written permission)
4. You are editor of a feature magazine, and you need a picture of some troubled teens to illustrate a story. Your photographer goes by the high school and shoots some pictures of some teens waiting outside for their rides. You print one of the pictures, only to find out later that these were some of the school's top scholars. Could they sue you successfully? (yes, because you potentially hurt their reputations)
5. , You take a picture of woman with her dress blowing up, showing her undergarments underneath. Although her face is not visible, her children are next to her. Since she was in public view, can your editor run it without fear of being sued? (no, she could successfully prove that the photo was embarrassing but not newsworthy)
6. You're at the hospital visiting a sick friend and have a chance to get a photo of a local celebrity being wheeled into the X-ray room. This would be of great interest to your readers. You take the pictures and turn one into your editor. Can she legally run it? (no, the law protects people privacy in hospitals -- she would need written permission to run it)
7. . You see a bad car accident and begin taking photos immediately, of the smashed cars, of the victims being tended to and put into the ambulance, etc. The police at the scene order you to stop. As a representative of the media, can you legally continue? (yes) If so, are there any limits to what you can shoot? (you cannot take pictures of a victim in an ambulance)
8. From the street, you photograph two teenagers kissing on a front porch. Even if you did not ask their permission, can your editor legally run it? (yes, legally it's OK since anything on a public street is fair game, but ethically you might decide against it)
9. . There has been a bad fire in a person's home, and you want to take pictures inside the house. The owner is not home, and the police and firefighters do not object. Do you, as a representative of the media, have a right to enter the house, or would you be trespassing? (you have a right to enter the house and take pictures)
10. You're shopping in a grocery store and witness a woman cut by a broken pickle jar. She sees your camera and asks you to photograph her wound. Can you legally take a picture? (yes) What if the manager sees you and asks you to stop? (you must stop since you're on their private property) What if the manager demands you turn your film over to her? (you don't have to -- that's your property)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Ethical Considerations in Photojournalism
Pair 1
Photographer: You are working with a reporter on a story about a coach who holds some national records for weightlifting. You still need a shot of him working out, so you arrange to meet him at the gym and take pictures of him lifting weights just as he normally does. Make an argument for running your photo.
Photo editor: Do you run this set-up photo? Why or why not?
Pair 2
Photographer: A baby left in a locked car died from the heat. You heard about it on a police scanner and were able to get a picture of the policeman taking the baby out of the car.
Photo editor: Do you run this as a warning to other parents? Why or why not?
Pair 3
Photographer: A fire escape collapses during a fire, plunging a woman to her death. A child who also falls miraculously survived.You get a picture of them in mid-air, just as the fire escape gives way. The photo is a potential Pulitzer Prize winner.
Photo editor: Do you run this photo of a woman falling to her death? Why or why not?
Pair 4
Photographer: A woman takes off her clothes in protest of being denied entrance to a building. You get a picture of her protest.
Photo editor: Do you run this photo of a nude woman? Why or why not?
Pair 5
Photographer: During a news conference, an important political figure makes an obscene gesture at some hecklers in the crowd. You take the picture and turn it into your editor.
Photo editor: This is definitely newsworthy but potentially offensive. Do you run it? Why or why not?
Pair 6
Photographer: A man notifies the press that a newsworthy event will be taking place at a certain time and location. He makes a statement protesting a government action, then douses himself with gasoline and lights a match. You get some dramatic pictures of the event, potential prize winners.
Photo editor: Should you run the picture because it's newsworthy or deny the protester the publicity he was seeking? Explain your decision.
Pair 7
Photographer: You photograph a family grieving over their son who drowned in a local canal. You capture them at the moment the authorities unzip the body bag for them to make identification of him.
Photo editor: Do you run this to urge other families to be cautious or respect the privacy of their grief?
Pair 8
Photographer: You photograph two students exchanging money and a bag of something. You realize this would be a great photo to go with a story your staff is doing on drugs on campus.
Photo editor: Do you run this? Why or why not?
Photo Journalists part 2
Ethical Decisions in Journalism part 1
Ethical Decisions in Journalism part 1
Overview and Rationale:
The lesson will help students understand the ethical considerations necessary in the
production and post-production process of photojournalism.
Goals:
Consider the potential effect on the viewer when selecting and taking photos.
Try to use proper angles and lighting to produce appropriate effects in photos.
News photos are a form of journalism, not art. Find the iconic photo, not the cool one.
(Oza)
When it is appropriate to use posed/staged photos.
Photoshop, and other postproduction software, is a tool to help you improve your photos,
not alter them. (cropping, etc.)
The difference between photojournalism and photo illustrations.
Essential Questions:
What do we mean when we refer to “journalistic ethics?”
What role do these ethics play in photojournalism?
PhotoJournalism
Ethical Decisions in Journalism
Ethical Decisions in Journalism
From the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics:
" Journalists should . . . never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.”
" Journalists should . . . never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.”
For a code of ethics entirely on photojournalism, see the National Press Photographers Association Code of EthicsSome clauses from this code:
• Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
• Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
• Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects.
• Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups.
• Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work.
• Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
• While photographing subjects, do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
• Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
• Respect the integrity of the photographic moment.
• Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
• Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
• Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects.
• Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups.
• Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work.
• Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
• While photographing subjects, do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
• Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
• Respect the integrity of the photographic moment.
Situation 1: Boston Bomber/ Time's cover
Situation 2: Bridge accident
Situation 3: Car Fire
Students will be presented with situations of libel and libelous photography. They will justify is situations are printable in a newspaper or must be held back.
-Students will review works by a photojournalist
-Students will review works by a photojournalist
What does it take to be a great journalist?
A great journalist cares about people and an ideal world. A great journalist can approach a topic as vast as the universe and make it simple and interesting to both Einstein and the new immigrant, who is trying to learn the language.
The written word has power. With skill, reporters can expose the dark deeds of the world and bring them into the light. However, journalism is limited to non-apathetic, monolinguistic people with some time to kill and a few neurons still firing.
Enter photojournalism. It destroys almost all barriers. Justice can draw its sword in the time it takes an eye to scan an image. An image has no age, language or intelligence limits.
Back to Top
What is a photojournalist?
A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of nouns (people, places and things). A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available - frozen images.
Photojournalists capture "verbs." This sounds simple, but a room of professional photographers was dumbfounded by this realization. Even after a full-length lecture with documentation and visual evidence, half of the photographers still had no clue what the difference was.
At the end of the presentation. One man said (he really did), "So, what's the difference between photography and photojournalism?" Luckily, two people (only two) turned to him and yelled, "Verbs!"
Although photojournalists can take properly exposed and well composed photographs all day long, they hunt verbs. They hunt them, shoot them and show them to their readers. Then, they hunt more.
A photojournalist has thousands of pairs of eyes looking over his shoulder constantly. The readers are insistent: "What are they doing?" "What did you see?" and "What happened?".
The readers wake PJs up at night. They keep PJs awake. The eyes always want to know what they missed. Readers can't see what they missed with a noun. It works if the question is specific enough (what did the condemned building look like?), but most answers require verbs.
To tell a story, a sentence needs a subject, a verb and a direct object. News photos need the same construction. Photojournalists tell stories with their images. Also, words are always used in conjunction with photojournalist's images.
The words below a photo are called a cutline. I write the cutlines that go with most of my images. At many newspapers, photographers provide names and nothing else. They don't write cutlines because they sometimes can't write a lead (lede) graph for a story. They also may not be able to photograph a sentence (sports being the exclusion, and there are plenty of supporting images to prove my point in this genre as well).
To be a photojournalist, we must understand the relationship between the image and these basic elements of language (all languages - worldwide).
The girl hits (or misses) the ball. There are no other options.
The girl is easy to photograph. The ball is easy to photograph. The verb is the hard part.
As a servant of the citizens, it's the photojournalist's OBLIGATION to capture the entire sentence involved in EVERY event. There are no excuses. It's hit or missed. Some photographers don't care. They have a picture of the bat. "Hey, that's what tried to hit the ball." They just don't get it.
Back to Top
More on the photojournalist
A photojournalist is a visual reporter of facts. The public places trust in its reporters to tell the truth. The same trust is extended to photojournalists as visual reporters.
This responsibility is paramount to a photojournalist. At all times, we have many thousands of people seeing through our eyes and expecting to see the truth. Most people immediately understand an image.
In today's world of grocery store tabloids and digital manipulation of images, the photojournalist must still tell the truth. The photojournalist constantly hunts for the images (or verbs), which tell of the day-to-day struggles and accomplishments of his community. These occurrences happen naturally. There is no need to "set up" reality. There is no need to lie to a community that bestows its trust. In a nutshell: If a photojournalist isn't going to fake a fire or a street stabbing scene, why would he set up "person A" giving "person B" an object (award, check, trophy etc.)?
The photojournalist simply wants to hang around, be forgotten and wait for the right moment. Then, the hunt begins anew.
Like the police officer or firefighter, the photojournalist's concern is his community even if that means sacrificing comfort or life. Many photojournalists die every year in the process of collecting visual information, which lets the public know of atrocities, dangers and the mundane.
Back to Top
What makes a photojournalist different from a photographer?
Photographers take pictures of nouns (people, places and things). Photojournalists shoot action verbs ("kicks," "explodes," "cries," etc.). Photojournalists do shoot some nouns. These nouns can be standard photos of people (portraits), places (proposed zoning areas or construction sites) and things (name it). However, the nouns we seek still must tell a story.
Standard -1.9.11.A: Use media and technology resources for research, information analysis, problem solving, and decision making in content learning. Identify complexities and inconsistencies in the information and the different perspectives found in each medium
A great journalist cares about people and an ideal world. A great journalist can approach a topic as vast as the universe and make it simple and interesting to both Einstein and the new immigrant, who is trying to learn the language.
The written word has power. With skill, reporters can expose the dark deeds of the world and bring them into the light. However, journalism is limited to non-apathetic, monolinguistic people with some time to kill and a few neurons still firing.
Enter photojournalism. It destroys almost all barriers. Justice can draw its sword in the time it takes an eye to scan an image. An image has no age, language or intelligence limits.
Back to Top
What is a photojournalist?
A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of nouns (people, places and things). A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available - frozen images.
Photojournalists capture "verbs." This sounds simple, but a room of professional photographers was dumbfounded by this realization. Even after a full-length lecture with documentation and visual evidence, half of the photographers still had no clue what the difference was.
At the end of the presentation. One man said (he really did), "So, what's the difference between photography and photojournalism?" Luckily, two people (only two) turned to him and yelled, "Verbs!"
Although photojournalists can take properly exposed and well composed photographs all day long, they hunt verbs. They hunt them, shoot them and show them to their readers. Then, they hunt more.
A photojournalist has thousands of pairs of eyes looking over his shoulder constantly. The readers are insistent: "What are they doing?" "What did you see?" and "What happened?".
The readers wake PJs up at night. They keep PJs awake. The eyes always want to know what they missed. Readers can't see what they missed with a noun. It works if the question is specific enough (what did the condemned building look like?), but most answers require verbs.
To tell a story, a sentence needs a subject, a verb and a direct object. News photos need the same construction. Photojournalists tell stories with their images. Also, words are always used in conjunction with photojournalist's images.
The words below a photo are called a cutline. I write the cutlines that go with most of my images. At many newspapers, photographers provide names and nothing else. They don't write cutlines because they sometimes can't write a lead (lede) graph for a story. They also may not be able to photograph a sentence (sports being the exclusion, and there are plenty of supporting images to prove my point in this genre as well).
To be a photojournalist, we must understand the relationship between the image and these basic elements of language (all languages - worldwide).
The girl hits (or misses) the ball. There are no other options.
The girl is easy to photograph. The ball is easy to photograph. The verb is the hard part.
As a servant of the citizens, it's the photojournalist's OBLIGATION to capture the entire sentence involved in EVERY event. There are no excuses. It's hit or missed. Some photographers don't care. They have a picture of the bat. "Hey, that's what tried to hit the ball." They just don't get it.
Back to Top
More on the photojournalist
A photojournalist is a visual reporter of facts. The public places trust in its reporters to tell the truth. The same trust is extended to photojournalists as visual reporters.
This responsibility is paramount to a photojournalist. At all times, we have many thousands of people seeing through our eyes and expecting to see the truth. Most people immediately understand an image.
In today's world of grocery store tabloids and digital manipulation of images, the photojournalist must still tell the truth. The photojournalist constantly hunts for the images (or verbs), which tell of the day-to-day struggles and accomplishments of his community. These occurrences happen naturally. There is no need to "set up" reality. There is no need to lie to a community that bestows its trust. In a nutshell: If a photojournalist isn't going to fake a fire or a street stabbing scene, why would he set up "person A" giving "person B" an object (award, check, trophy etc.)?
The photojournalist simply wants to hang around, be forgotten and wait for the right moment. Then, the hunt begins anew.
Like the police officer or firefighter, the photojournalist's concern is his community even if that means sacrificing comfort or life. Many photojournalists die every year in the process of collecting visual information, which lets the public know of atrocities, dangers and the mundane.
Back to Top
What makes a photojournalist different from a photographer?
Photographers take pictures of nouns (people, places and things). Photojournalists shoot action verbs ("kicks," "explodes," "cries," etc.). Photojournalists do shoot some nouns. These nouns can be standard photos of people (portraits), places (proposed zoning areas or construction sites) and things (name it). However, the nouns we seek still must tell a story.
Standard -1.9.11.A: Use media and technology resources for research, information analysis, problem solving, and decision making in content learning. Identify complexities and inconsistencies in the information and the different perspectives found in each medium
