Category: Ethics

  • Fallout From a Literary Fraud – Love and Consequences – Margaret Seltzer – Margaret B. Jones – New York Times

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    Geoffrey Kloske, publisher of Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that released the book, by Margaret Seltzer, under a pseudonym, Margaret B. Jones, said on Tuesday that there was nothing else that he or Sarah McGrath, the book’s editor, could have done to prevent the author from lying.

    “In hindsight we can second-guess all day things we could have looked for or found,” Mr. Kloske said. “The fact is that the author went to extraordinary lengths: she provided people who acted as her foster siblings. There was a professor who vouched for her work, and a writer who had written about her that seemed to corroborate her story.” He added that Ms. Seltzer had signed a contract in which she had legally promised to tell the truth. “The one thing we wish,” Mr. Kloske said, “is that the author had told us the truth.”

    Check it out here.

  • Author Admits Acclaimed Memoir Is Fantasy – New York Times

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    In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
    Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.

    Check it out here.

  • Researchers Look to Spot Photo Hoaxes – Wired

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    A growing number of researchers and companies are looking for such signs of tampering in hopes of restoring credibility to photographs at a time when the name of a popular program for manipulating digital images has become a verb, Photoshopping.
    Adobe Systems Inc., the developer of Photoshop, said it may incorporate their techniques into future releases.
    “There’s much more awareness and much more skepticism when (people) are looking at images,” said Kevin Connor, a senior director of product management at Adobe. “That’s why we think that’s something we need to get involved in. It’s not healthy to have people be too skeptical about what they saw.”

    Check it out here.

  • EastSouthWestNorth: Top 10 News Photo Of The Year Was Faked

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    “This is a photograph that everybody is familiar with.  When I first saw it, my eyes lit up: the Tibetan antelopes and the train on the Qinghai-Tibet railroad appeared simultaneously in the eye of the camera.  This was such a precise and decisive moment!  Thus, this photograph was selected as one of the top 10 most memorable photographs of 2006 and its author received innumerable honors … but on the day before yesterday, I suddenly discovered that there was a very obvious line at the bottom of the photograph.” On February 12, an essay titled Liu Weiqiang’s award winning photograph of the Tibetan antelopes is suspected of being fake was posted to the world’s largest Chinese-language photography forum Unlimited sights and colors.  This post quickly drew more than 10,000 page views.  As of 7pm last evening, there were 120,478 page views and 1,524 comments.  Some netizens even compared Liu with “Tiger Zhou.”  Could it be that this photograph was the result of PhotoShop manipulation?

    Check it out here.

  • Stretching the Truth Just Became Easier (and Cheaper) – New York Times

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    “Reality is a lie,” said Mr. Baldassi.

    Automated tools like Mr. Baldassi’s are changing the editing of photography by making it possible for anyone to tweak a picture, delete unwanted items or even combine the best aspects of several similar pictures into one.

    Check it out here.

  • Is Reuters Publishing Fake Photographs? – mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY

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    Something is fishy over at Reuters. The news wire has been caught distributing what appear to be staged photographs of Gaza power outages. Check out the two photographs above, taken by Gaza-based Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem.

    The captions for the pictures read “Palestinian lawmakers attend a parliament session in candlelight during a power cut in Gaza January 22, 2008.”

    Except… look closely at the pictures. Is that sunlight steaming in through the windows? Yes. Yes it is. They’re holding a parliamentary session by candlelight during the daytime.

    Check it out here.

  • Golfweek's Bland Rage – Blogs Design and Production @ FolioMag.com via PDN Pulse

    Golfweek's Bland Rage – Blogs Design and Production @ FolioMag.com via PDN Pulse

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    Lots of buzz online about the termination of editor Dave Seanor over this cover, which refers to a thoughtlessly stupid remark by golf anchor Kelly Tighman.

    It’s worth noting that the controversy over this cover is inextricably wrapped up in its conceptual quality. The insipid stock image brings nothing to the package that isn’t explicit in the headline. The noose may be a loaded cliché, but that doesn’t mean it’s not just as tiresome on a magazine cover as any other over-used icon.

    Check it out here.

    via PDN Pulse.

  • The Denver Post – House panel chides Bruce over kick

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    The Denver Post – House panel chides Bruce over kick: “A six-member Capitol panel voted unanimously today to recommend that the House censure Rep. Douglas Bruce for kicking a news photographer.

    The panel of lawmakers took testimony from four people — starting with the Rocky Mountain News photographer who was kicked in the leg for taking Bruce’s picture during the morning prayer.

    ‘I didn’t expect him to kick me with a Bible in the hand,’ photographer Javier Manzano testified.”

  • The Photographs Not Taken

    The Photographs Not Taken: “The Photographs Not Taken is a collection of essays by photographers about the times they didn’t use their camera. “

  • House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News

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    House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “By resolution, the House said: ‘The special committee will investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred between Rep. Douglas Bruce and a member of the press on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 14, 2008.’

    House Republicans on Monday had condemned Bruce for kicking the photographer and promised a tight rein on their new colleague to ensure such an outburst ‘never happens again.’”

  • PAM PLATT: Flurry over a photo prompts explanation

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    PAM PLATT: Flurry over a photo prompts explanation: “Some of the comments registered by angry, offended and/or baffled readers: ‘Awful,’ ‘an embarrassment,’ ‘horrible decision,’ ‘poor judgment,’ ‘distasteful,’ ‘a mystery’ and ‘shame on you.’

    I have to admit I was a little baffled by the response. Aren’t sports the province of the ubiquitous fanny pat? Aren’t players in each other’s faces all the time during athletic matches? Yes and yes. So what’s a little game-time hug in that universe?

    Well, apparently this photo crossed a line for some readers, some of whom demanded an apology and/or an explanation.”

    (Via Romenesko.)

  • Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News

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    Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “But his patience snapped as photographers from the Rocky and Denver Post crouched before him to shoot his picture as he stood for the House’s morning prayer.

    Bruce told Rocky photographer Javier Manzano ‘Don’t do that again,’ and then gave him a swift kick in the knee.

    Asked by reporters in his office about the incident, Bruce said his kick was warranted and that he had warned the photographers not to take his picture during the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.

    ‘In 21 years, I don’t think there has ever been an instance where I had to do something to stop somebody from behaving in such a coarse and disgusting way,’ Bruce said.”

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  • Time Gets Crafty With Weepy Reagan Cover

    Time Gets Crafty With Weepy Reagan Cover

    Radar:

    Is Time hoping a little controversy will draw attention to its redesign? The first new-look issue, on newsstands tomorrow, features what appears to be a photo of Ronald Reagan with a fat tear sliding down his cheek, illustrating the cover story, “How the Right Went Wrong.” A somewhat cryptic credit in small type on the (revamped!) table of contents describes the image this way: “Photograph by David Hume Kennerly. Tear by Tim O’Brien.” Nowhere does it specifically state that the cover is a photo illustration—in other words, that it’s Photoshopped.

    Here.

  • Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

    Wired:

    A suite of photo-authentication tools under development by Adobe Systems could make it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images, Wired News has learned.

    Adobe plans to start rolling out the technology in a number of photo-authentication plug-ins for its Photoshop product beginning as early as 2008. The company is working with a leading digital forgery specialist at Dartmouth College, who met with the Associated Press last month.

    The push follows a media scandal over a doctored war photograph published by Reuters last year. The news agency has since announced that it’s working with both Adobe and Canon to come up with ways to prevent a recurrence of the incident.

    “Fundamentally, our values as a company requires us to build tools to detect tampering, not just create tampering,” said Dave Story, vice president of product engineering at Adobe.

    Here.

  • How Do You Photograph the Amish? Let Us Count the Ways

    CJR:

    The AP’s Carolyn Kaster appreciates this approach but has a slightly different philosophy: whenever possible, do no harm. “You can go through this business and try to make pictures of impact and importance but if an image is to have a journalistic purpose, to communicate something, if you can communicate it in a different way, without causing harm, then I think you’re obliged to do that,” Kaster said. She described a photograph that she declined to take last week because consent was not granted: She approached an Amish school in the area and “without my cameras explained who I was and what I’d like to do, to take a picture of kids on school grounds with no one singled out.” The teacher told Kaster that the children were “very wary” and asked her not to take the picture. “I said no problem. I did not make that photograph.”

    Kaster went to two other schools and got the same answer. “I had every right as an American to stand on public property and take that photograph,” she said. “I could’ve taken the picture and asked the teacher later. But that’s just how I approach this community.” Kaster added, “That might have been a key picture — children in the schoolyard of a one-room Amish schoolhouse,” and conceded that colleagues might criticize her for not having taken that photograph. “But,” she said, “I found another way to communicate what I wanted to communicate that I felt was within the boundaries of the [Amish traditions]” — by waiting for the children to get out of school and “be away from the school house environment,” finding a group of them walking home and talking to them and photographing them as they “hammed it up.” Said Kaster, “I could tell I wasn’t frightening them and causing them grief by photographing them. And I did have a job to do. I needed to make pictures of the Amish community, specifically children.” (As both Kaster and the Intelligencer Journal’s Dan Marschka pointed out, the Amish are baptized as adults and so children, not yet church members, are not under the same religious prohibitions regarding photography).

    Here.

  • Reuters purges photo database

    Guardian:

    Reuters began an immediate enquiry into Hajj’s other work and today found that a second photograph, of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated August 2, had been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three.

    “Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout its long and distinguished history,” Mr Szlukovenyi said.

    “It undermines not only our reputation but also the good name of all our photographers.” He added that the mere fact that Hajj had altered two of his photographs meant none of his work for Reuters could be trusted either by the news service or its users.

    Here.

  • Reuters Yanks Doctored Photograph

    Reuters Yanks Doctored Photograph

    ynet:

    Johnson added: “Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There’s really no question about it.”

    Speaking to Ynetnews, Johnson said: “This has to cast doubt not only on the photographer who did the alterations, but on Reuters’ entire review process. If they could let such an obvious fake get through to publication, how many more faked or ‘enhanced’ photos have not been caught?”

    Here.