Link: Walk your camera.

As you can imagined I am in a state of shock. I feel ashamed and humiliated for trusting CNN. I am stunned that they would take my work out of context. I spent a long time looking at their website before agreeing to show my work and in no way did I see any indication that they were subverting photographers work to lead to controversy that would provide greater visibility of their site. Still, I take responsibility for not knowing better.

via Duckrabbit

Link: Korean Central News Agency

The Associated Press collaborated with North Korea’s state media outlet (KCNA) for a photo exhibition in New York City that opened last month. I tracked down the video on the KCNA page here: http://www.kcna.kp/kcnadata/graphics/emedia.flv

Here’s some information on the Media of North Korea page at wikipedia:

Kim Jong-il’s book, Guidance for Journalists, advises that “newspapers carry articles in which they unfailingly hold the president in high esteem, adore him and praise him as the great revolutionary leader”.[5] Media reports in North Korea are often one-sided and exaggerated, playing “little or no role in gathering and disseminating vital information true to facts” and providing propaganda for the regime.[6]

Wikipedia page on KCNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Central_News_Agency

Photo by KCNA

Here’s the AP story on the exhibit:

Link: N.Y. show captures snapshots of North Korean life (SFGate)

“Windows on North Korea: Photographs From the DPRK,” is a joint exhibition by the Associated Press and the state-run Korean Central News Agency, and features a mix of archival and contemporary images.

It’s an appropriate question to ask— why is the Associated Press putting its work alongside that of the KCNA, an unethical “news outlet” run by a government who keeps a reported 150,000 to 200,000 of its own starving citizens in prison labor camps?

Presses were stopped at Cincinnati Enquirer over the weekend after someone spotted “F*ck” in a photo. Thousands of Sunday papers were tossed out and the photo was changed for the new run.

Link: Boing Boing

You can tell by the pixels: The Russian Orthodox Church is accused of Photoshopping a photo on their website of Patriarch Kirill I to “disappear” a $30,000 watch. The church leader has previously said that the watch does not exist.

The British Institute of Professional Photography is considering banning judges from entering its annual competition after four of this year’s jurors received prizes in the organisation’s Professional Photography Awards.

‘No conflict of interest’ in voting for your own agency?  I’m beginning to wonder what in the world of photojournalism actually would be considered a ‘conflict of interest’?

Speaking for NOOR images Claudia Hinterseer was kind enough to explain to Brook how the photography competition scene works

‘Looking at other international photography contests you will be amazed how often jury members are professionally or – as is very common in our industry – personally (on the basis of friendships) related to photographers whose work is rewarded.’

Link: Tulsa World

when a situation like yesterday’s shooting in the plaza near the courthouse occurs, that process becomes all the more important. The decision to publish a photo that some may view as offensive or graphic was not taken lightly. The decision did not rest solely on the shoulders of one person. It was a group decision and it came after a discussion

But every time I see one of these “news images” — subtly altered to resemble images taken on vintage film stock or using expensive lenses and filters — I feel cheated. And so should you.

The disclaimer proposed by the bill would have to say: “Postproduction techniques were made to alter the appearance in this advertisement.  When using this product, similar results may not be achieved.”

The contrarian this time is On the Media host Bob Garfield, writing for The Guardian. He satirizes Patrick as “the Great Satan” and says “let him suffer the fate of the frog!” He then raises that pesky question: “Don’t all journalists alter reality?” Finally, he asks this rhetorical humdinger: “[d]id he [Patrick] misrepresent the story, or did he perhaps just make it clearer?”

Today readers of The Bee learned that editors investigating Patrick’s archives found two additional images that had been digitally altered, also a violation of The Bee’s ethics standards

The Sacramento Bee fired longtime photographer Bryan Patrick on Friday for violating the paper’s ethics policy forbidding manipulation of documentary photographs.

When published on the Bee’s front page on Sunday as part of a two-picture combo, the images carried a byline for longtime Bee staff photographer Bryan Patrick.

The Sacramento Bee published a photograph taken during the Galt Winter Bird Festival of a snowy egret grabbing for a frog just caught by a great egret. This week we learned the photograph had been digitally altered by the photographer in violation of our standards

The core determinant, for me, is whether objects were moved, people’s faces were changed, images were combined in a way that altered what anyone would have seen in the setting, or if things were removed from the frame

perhaps it was because the scene was so nearly impeccable that someone — an overzealous North Korean photo editor? — appears to have taken issue with an errant group of men, barely noticeable in a sweeping photograph of the procession in central Pyongyang, and removed them

Photographers are facing enormous ethical questions posed by the allegations aired during the ongoing Leveson inquiry. Here, Max Houghton, course leader in MA Photojournalism at the University of Westminster and a writer on photography offers her personal views on the challenges ahead.

Wired.com

A new photograph-analyzing tool quantifies changes made by digital airbrushers in the fashion and lifestyle industry, where image alteration has become the psychologically destructive norm.

Retweets, like tweets, should not be written in a way that looks like you’re expressing a personal opinion on the issues of the day. A retweet with no comment of your own can easily be seen as a sign of approval of what you’re relaying

In journalism justifications like that pop up frequently to argue why something considered unethical should be seen as okay “under the circumstances.” You’ve heard them: “magazines are different from newspapers” or “the cover is an advertisement” to explain away a breach of journalism ethics. Our ethics should determine our actions, of course. But there seems to be an unending stream of ways journalists justify letting their actions determine their ethics.