Category: Access & Censorship

One of photography’s most important problems is the power imbalance between someone operating a camera and someone finding her or himself in front of it. Unless there is an actual collaboration going on, it is the photographer whose decisions result in what the subject looks like in the picture(s). I used “actual” in front of “collaboration” on purpose: unlike many other people, I do not think that having some chit chat with a subject makes for a collaboration. A collaboration would be a joint making of the picture, in which photographer and subject talk about how the subject wants to be portrayed, what the photographers sees in her or him, etc.

A Seattle judge ruled Friday five news outlets must turn over unreleased photos and videos from a late May protest to local law enforcement. The Seattle Police Department believes the raw footage would help solve an ongoing arson and theft investigation, but First Amendment lawyers believe the ruling is troubling.

“Let’s revoke the NYPD’s ability to issue press credentials entirely. They’ve repeatedly proven that they are unwilling and unable to oversee a legitimate process,” Scott Stringer, the city’s comptroller, tweeted. Keith Powers, a City Council member, tweeted that he was considering legislation that would move credentialing to a new agency.

A new Photo Bill of Rights, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the current uprising against police brutality, has caused fissures in the American photojournalism community and raised an important question about “informed consent” in photographing protesters.

This is a rolling list of assaults against photojournalists by police and protestors covering the George Floyd protests around the country. Some of the data is pulled from the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s list. This list does not include detainment without assault.

For his entire administration, Trump has continually bashed the media — calling it “lamestream” and “fake news” and, worse of all, “the enemy of the people.” Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that the media was a target for violence and attacks all over the nation during its coverage of the protests.

On any given day, any one of the attacks that I mention in this column would be newsworthy. The fact that this is only a sampling of the many attacks on journalists this weekend underscores the dangers that they are willing to face to document an outpouring of anger, frustration and, in some cases, senseless opportunistic violence.

The dawn of a pandemic—as seen through the news and social media posts that vanished from China’s internet.