megjac
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Blurring out the truth.

December 28, 2007 1:03 pm by megjac in News & Politics
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Pictures

I take pictures. Everything in a picture is important or it would not be in the picture. I control what is in the frame, because I am more important than the picture. I "doctor", sharpen/saturate/straighten/play with focus/crop my pictures because my version of reality is more important than the real picture. My pictures are not news, if I did take something newsworthy I would not doctor it because I am not more important than the news.

Yesterday, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. You probably had saw it on the news or on the front page of your paper today it was illustrated with a photo of a man with his arms outstretched surrounded by out-of focus mayhem. Life is not out of focus. News photos shouldn't be either. The editors made themselves more important than the news. When that many people are killed, it leaves a bloody, sharply focused, mess.. The original, in-focus shot will win a Pulitzer. Go here to see the real picture, and then read here and read about them.

There is a genre in movies called "Torture Porn", TV shows routinely glamerously show us corpses in varies stages of decomp, we play video games where we kill as many in as a bloody a manor as possible and the PTB think we can't handle real death? No real dead people for us? When the news reports tell us XXX number of people were killed, we're okay with blurring them out? Are they afraid that real images of real dead people would turn us off the fake ones? Is it to make sure it doesn't matter to us? Would they prefer we only know fake death? What if 45 dead actually meant to us 45 dead people not 45 points.

All links from Wonkette.com

And don't give me any we-must-protect-the-widdle-children bull shit either. My Mother saw the newsreels of the concentration camps at the damn movie theatre and she was very, very, very young. You think back in the forties they didn't care about the widdle children saw?

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backyardbeacon
backyardbeacon 5 pts

My understanding of my role as a staff photojournalist and a picture editor -- to report honestly -- was challenged by the cereal test ( http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=55&aid=63... ): "What images would readers want to see over a breakfast table? Or what images would they want their children to encounter?"

But the feelings of survivors weigh most heavily against an obligation to tell the truth. In an interview ( http://wonkette.com/338482/what-they-sort-of-showe... ), Getty photographer John Moore describes his photograph, which captures a man's reaction to Bhutto's assassination: "I try not to focus too much on bodies ... I focus on the living ... not the dead. And this man and his grief really typified the situation and how so many felt about her death."

Since the composition of the photograph is framed around the man's emotive face and his uplifting arms, a case can be made for cropping in -- which would (partially) remove the dead bodies on the street.

However, I would argue for full-frame picture use -- the same approach taken by The New York Times. In order to fully grasp his grief, we must have access to the full landscape of the scene. In this case, "newsworthiness trumps taste."

"The residual impact or war is ugly and harsh," said Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "As a free press, we have the responsibility to bring that reality to our citizens. It's been photographs that moved the minds and hearts of human beings in ways written word can't. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

"The important thing is for news organizations to disclose to readers and viewers the thinking behind the decisions," he said.

A.M.
info@backyardbeacon.org
www.backyardbeacon.org ( http://www.backyardbeacon.org )

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