Category: Ethics

Ahmadinijad sucks at Photoshop – Boing Boing

Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:

a conversation among the photo staff about the photography of human suffering and the nature of art. I thought we should involve the larger photo community in our discussion, because it is a profound and timeless question.

The Observer:

A Spanish academic has revived the row over ‘The Falling Soldier’, arguing that natural features do not match its claimed site

Threat Level | Wired.com:

An Associated Press reporter’s official reprimand over an innocuous comment on his Facebook page has sparked the ire of union officials. They are now demanding that AP clarify its ethics guidelines and are also urging reporters to watch who they add to their friends lists.

Beverly Spicer – The Digital Journalist:

It is interesting that the president, who taught constitutional law for a decade at the University of Chicago, would concurrently reveal criminal activity and sweep it aside by suggesting the country simply accept the past and move forward. His suggestion, however, was quickly vetoed in the court of public opinion, and the president also found himself in the position of possible legal culpability in the future if he refuses to address alleged infractions of his predecessors. Thus, he left it to the Justice Department to pursue or not pursue accountability for the past.

In the face of a cacophony of criticism, what would Obama do about the some 2,000 additional photographs he promised to declassify—a promise he made when transparency seemed like a good idea? This issue is especially compelling to journalists in war zones who work tirelessly and at great risk to document conflict.

NYTimes.com says:

And yet a raw-celebrity movement has been slow in coming. That may be because, as several editors said privately, celebrities’ publicists almost always demand retouching of wrinkles and visible cellulite. As a result, a celebrity can look different from one magazine to the next.

PDNPulse says:
Check out this unusual editors’ note published by The New York Times on Friday

NYTimes.com says:

What if, Justice Potter Stewart asked a lawyer for The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, a disclosure of sensitive information in wartime “would result in the sentencing to death of 100 young men whose only offense had been that they were 19 years old and had low draft numbers?” The Times’s lawyer, Alexander M. Bickel, tried to duck the question, but the justice pressed him:

“You would say that the Constitution requires that it be published and that these men die?”

From Perfesser Kev:

A letter written to my students of the time, a couple weeks after the Columbine shootings:

May 4, 1999

Dear students,

Two weeks ago a horde descended upon Clement Park to cover the massacre at Columbine High School. There bereaved families and students found themselves face-to-face with more camera operators than I have seen anywhere, and that collision created a perfect laboratory for us to look at ourselves, the job we do and how the public reacts to our work.

Check it out here.

From Danish Photoshop Debate Leads To Disqualification:

Ethical questions surrounding photojournalists’ use of Photoshop in image processing is not a controversy confined to the American market. Currently the embroilment rages in Denmark, where at least one photojournalist has been disqualified from a contest because it’s been determined that his image manipulation went too far.

Check it out here.

From Picking Battles « Perfesser Kev:

Late last week a story from the U.K. revealed a point where photojournalism balances between public service, free speech, national security and intense journalism competition.

Robert Quick, the U.K.’s most powerful counter-terrorism officer, resigned after being photographed as he stepped from a car at 10 Downing Street, holding secret documents in plain sight.

Check it out here.