The night shift is a time when many of the most emotional and violent conflicts between residents of a city are displayed before the calm, objective lens of a camera’s eye. Having worked this time period for a large metropolitan daily newspaper, I’ve seen the results from tragic killings, devastating car crashes, and the aftermath of murders. As a 24-year-old photojournalist without much experience in the world up to that time, I’ve witnessed and photographed the mangled sight of a young man’s body laying on the ground after his life was cut short by a shotgun blast from a grocery store manager during a robbery attempt, the body of a man face down in the shallow water of a bayou next to his overturned sedan, and the lurid wail from a woman in police custody caught after she had plunged a knife into the chest of her lover. These memories will not pass as “tears in rain” as Rutger Hauer famously stated at the end of Blade Runner, but leave a psychic toll to this day (2012).

In all three situations, electronic flash pictures were taken at the scenes. These stark, hyper-focused, and high-contrast images shrouded by the night’s inevitable darkness were never published. Because a photo editor declined to use them, they were eventually filed in a folder in the newspaper’s repository, nicknamed, perhaps ironically yet somehow appropriately, “the morgue.” It’s a collection where few persons bother to look. In fact, it may be surprising to learn that most images recorded by a visual reporter are never seen by the public. What’s more, I knew at the instant I took the photographs that my editor would not want to include them within the next day’s record of newsworthy events. So why did I go to the trouble to take, edit, process, and put them on his desk?

Why should a photojournalist record images she knows will not be published or seen because of violent content?

A partial answer comes from understanding a visual reporter’s chief role-related responsibility – to record images of newsworthy events. However, the end result of that task is not for the public’s consumption, but for an editor to see them in order to satisfy her main duties – to make a decision to use the pictures and, if so, to decide how they will be used. As such, a visual reporter’s primary client is not a news viewer or user, but a news editor.

For the photojournalist, Kant’s categorical imperative is clearly a prominent philosophy when it comes to violent images. If pictures are not taken, a professional image maker runs the risk of not completing a vital role-related responsibility. Deciding a camera’s perspective, the choice of lens, the proper shutter speed and exposure, and so on at a scene, selecting which images best describe an event, processing the pictures for color balance, composition, continuity, and storytelling, and presenting selects to an editor are all a part of a visual journalist’s job and justified as ethical by the categorical imperative philosophy. Another ethical motivation based on the categorical imperative is to document the event for historical purposes. The reasons publishers store images are that those pictured might be of interest to the publication and researchers at a future time and to graphic designers who might need the images for other publications. However, if a photojournalist’s motivation in taking a picture is not to document events but to make money selling pictures, winning contests, or becoming famous, the hedonism, not the categorical imperative philosophy is invoked.

Praiseworthy visual reporters and editors communicate with each other to formulate reasons why the images should or should not be shown to the public. Again, the use of the categorical imperative philosophy by an editor invokes the rigid following of a journalistic rule – if a story is newsworthy, the visual news must be presented. There can be no exception. Fortunately, a more reasonable justification comes from the utilitarian philosophy. Viewers might be motivated to seek help if they are emotionally depressed after seeing those featured in the news. Although the publicizing of the images – whether still or moving – might not help the family and friends of the victims, a greater public is served by the possible lessons learned – a crucial test for the utilitarian philosophy. An editor might agree with a hedonistically motivated visual journalist and believe the pictures are Pulitzer Prize worthy and make them available for that reason. Such a decision is not necessarily unethical if paired with the categorical imperative and utilitarian philosophies.

Victims of Violence

Since the introduction of photography to the public in 1839 through the technical achievement accomplished by three French citizens, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Isidore Niépce, and with the inspired earlier work of his late father, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, history is filled with images that appalled, enraged, educated, persuaded, or were unseen by viewers because of their gruesome content (“Isidore,” n.d.).

The next year after the announcement of the daguerreotype process another Frenchman, Hippolyte Bayard was shown in a picture of what was considered (at the time) to be the first photograph of a body. The accompanying caption explained that after inventing his own photographic process that did not achieve the accolades or the lifetime pension offered by the French government to Daguerre and Niépce, Bayard committed suicide. The image reveals his corpse after it was retrieved from the Seine in Paris (Willette, 2015). Although Bayard’s shirtless body lies in a peaceful repose with calm facial features and his hands lying casually on a blanket, you can imagine the shock it invoked if viewers thought it were true. It wasn’t. The first picture of a cadaver was actually the first semi-nude, self-portrait, and set-up.

It didn’t take long before serious photojournalists, in still and moving media, soon turned their cameras toward the unblinking gaze of those actually killed. Visual reporters have always been attracted to wars and other military conflicts because of their dramatic combination of peril and pathos. During the American Civil War, Mathew Brady hired some of the most famous names in photographic history – Alexander Gardner and Timothy H. Sullivan – to take pictures of military encampments and post-battle scenes (“Photography and the Civil War,” 2017). Actual, fast-moving conflict was impossible to capture given the long shutter speed required of the wet-collodion process used during this time period. Subsequent pictures of distorted and decaying corpses were too gruesome for the public grown weary of the long war. Consequently, Brady went bankrupt when he couldn’t sell them at his galleries. About 40 years later during the Spanish-American War, Collier magazine photojournalist Jimmy Hare “photographed swollen bodies with bones breaking through the skin” that were nevertheless published by William Randolph Hearst publications in order to enrage viewers to support the conflict (Mraz, 2017). About 40 years later, Hungarian war photographer Robert Capa captured a “moment-of-death” picture of a soldier during the Spanish Civil War hit in the head by a bullet, although some claim it was a set-up (Rohter, 2009). Nevertheless, it was shown in Time magazine and other publications. During World War II photographer George Strock took a picture of the bodies of U.S. servicemen face down on a beach that was initially censored by the government, but when released and published in Life magazine, was praised by viewers because, as one soldier wrote, it gave “real meaning to our struggle” (Dunlap, 2013). After images were released of Holocaust victims with their bodies stacked in gruesome piles, the world was educated to the banality of evil (Rosenberg, 2017). In 1963 Associated Press reporter Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức protesting persecution by the South Vietnamese government (Witty, 2012). Five years later during the Vietnam War Eddie Adams captured the moment-of-death street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner and won a Pulitzer Prize (“Saigon execution,” 2014). Is there a common link for these pictures spanning almost 100 years? In each case, a photojournalist had to be on the scene to actually take the picture. Lives were risked for the profession. Some lives were lost for the same reason.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Kenneth Jarecke photographed the remains of an Iraqi man burned alive while attempting to escape the cab of his truck (DeGhett, 2014). The horrific image was never widely published. For Jarecke, the understanding of his role-related responsibility combined with an assurance from the categorical imperative philosophy to take pictures that led him to the conclusion that “if I don’t take pictures like these, people like my mom will think war is what they see in movies. It’s what I came here to do. It’s what I have to do” (a classic categorical imperative justification). James Gaines, the managing editor of Life magazine at the time declined to publish the image based on a golden rule justification of not adding grief when he explained, “We have a fairly substantial number of children who read Life magazine.” However, Stella Kramer, a freelance photo editor for Life invoked the hedonism philosophy as the personal reason for Gaines’ decision with Americans only tolerating a “good, clean war. So, that’s why these issues are all basically just propaganda.” She then added, “As far as Americans were concerned nobody ever died.” Author Torie Rose DeGhett voiced a utilitarian, educational justification for printing the picture, “Photos like Jarecke’s not only show that bombs drop on real people; they also make the public feel accountable.” Besides pictures of those killed on military battlefields, other memorable images that show public deaths can either sensationalize or memorialize victims depending on your perspective.

American wars today are too often fought like cold, objective, video games with soundless explosions of colorless smoke, fire, debris, and death seen in third-person controlled detachment from military drone aircraft as their guided missiles complete a mission by soldiers thousands of miles from the battlefield. Is it Aristotle’s golden mean that justifies the decision to avoid ground troops in favor of this monitor mayhem or is it hedonism is employed to criticize a strategy in which superior technology is used to kill from a screen’s image outside Las Vegas with more innocent civilians as victims than actual enemy combatants? For the visual reporting profession a more fundamental question should be asked: Will camera-carrying drones replace photojournalists’ boots on the ground?

In the web browser of your choice, use the keywords, “girl bomb Pulitzer” and you will find Nick Ut’s black and white Pulitzer Prize photograph from the Vietnam War taken in 1972 (“Nick Ut,” n.d.). Titled “The Terror of War,” it shows 9-year-old Kim Phuc and other children running and screaming in agony after an accidental napalm bombing. You will also discover Massoud Hossaini’s Pulitzer Prize winning haunting color image of Tarana Akbari crying amid the bloody bodies of about 70 persons killed from a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2011 (“The Pulitzer Prizes,” 2012). Hossaini, an Afghan photojournalist for the French picture agency AFP, upon learning of his win said that he hopes those who see the picture “don’t forget the pain Afghanistan’s people have in their life.” Sadly, we learn of such bombings almost daily from news reports from the Middle East, but it takes a still image to rivet our attention and think of the human cost of war. For Hossaini, his hope that viewers always remember a child’s pain is a utilitarian approach. For myself, Rawls’ veil of ignorance and his call for empathy guides my reaction – I never want to see a loved one of mine with so many tears and so much blood. And yet, and this may be something you disagree with, even if Tarana were my daughter and those were my family members dead on the ground and I were an editor responsible for running the picture, I would have made the image public. I would have relied on my role-related responsibility and either the categorical imperative or utilitarianism philosophy to educate viewers in words and images the mission of journalism and the sometimes painful decisions that must be made by visual reporters and editors.

The history of images that show victims of violence continues beyond battlefield images and is unfortunately long and often questionable. A student of photojournalism ethics (or anyone reasonably proficient in conducting a web search) should have seen:

Poynter Institute’s Kelly McBride wrote that Demir’s picture should be shown because of its political significance. She adds, “Sometimes it’s gratuitous for the media to show images of death [a hedonistic critique]. But sometimes it’s absolutely the most responsible thing journalists could do” [utilitarianism]. Humans find countless ways to die and photographers must be present to make records for history in order to promote the need for commerce but more importantly to satisfy their professional duty.

Rights to Privacy

After photography became a simple, hand-held operation due to the invention of roll film by George Eastman, the medium was expanded beyond the scope of chemists to include the general public. However, it should be noted that Eastman’s camera cost about $25 in the 1880s. Adjusted for inflation it would cost more than $500 today – a hobby only the upper middle class at the time could afford. Nevertheless, the amateur boom included persons taking pictures of themselves, their friends and family, and significantly for this discussion, strangers. The New York Times “likened the snapshot craze with an outbreak of cholera that had become a national scourge.” Vigilante associations were formed to protect the honor of unsuspecting women from photographers. After a man destroyed the camera of someone taking a picture of a woman, the jury would not convict him. In Victorian London a photographer had to obtain an official permit to take pictures in a park while the German government passed a statute prohibiting photography without permission from a person. The writer Bill Jay noted during this earlier time period, “As any impartial observer will admit, no aspect of a life was too private, no tragedy too harrowing, no sorrow too personal, no event too intimate to be witnessed and recorded by the ubiquitous photographer” (Featherstone, 1991). Those words easily apply to today’s use of smartphones and our celebrity-centric world. Unfortunately, hedonism is a strong motivation on both sides of a lens.

In the United States with its First Amendment protections, no legislation ever required photographers to ask permission to take pictures of persons in public. When Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange in 1936 took pictures of Florence Thompson and three of her children in Nipomo, California with an image from the series considered to be one of the finest in the history of the medium, the so-called “Migrant Mother” close-up, Thompson bitterly complained for years that her privacy had been violated and that she deserved compensation (“Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother,’” 2013). Likewise, Mary Ann Vecchio voiced the opinion that John Filo’s photograph of her during the Kent State University tragedy ruined her life when it violated her privacy and was displayed throughout the world. In both cases Thompson and Vecchio would have little standing in the courts, as the situations were newsworthy and taken in public locations.

An important area of privacy law that is applicable to still and moving images has to do with the concept of unreasonable intrusion. Generally, anything that can be seen in plain, public view can be photographed. However, a visual reporter is not permitted to use technology that violates that mandate – cameras that are hidden, with long lenses, attached to drones or helicopters, and so on. Pictures in private places require permission. Well-known street photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia in 2005 took a picture of Erno Nussenzweig as he walked through Times Square in New York City (Gefter, 2006). The image was later exhibited in an art gallery and published in a book of photographs. Nussenzweig sued because he claimed his privacy was violated. He lost the case. If he had won, street photography as commonly practiced by amateurs, artists, and photojournalists would have been severely limited. Also, for paparazzi it is good news as well because taking pictures of celebrities remains permissible. Nevertheless, what is legal is not always ethical and sometimes a photographer acting unethically can also be legally liable.

The most recognized case of a photographer violating a person’s privacy is that of freelance photographer Ron Galella who was admittedly obsessed with the former wife of President John Kennedy and wife of a Greek shipping magnate, Jacqueline Onassis (“Story behind,” 2016). Galella was famous as one of the first paparazzo. Time magazine called him the “Godfather of the U.S. paparazzi culture.” It is estimated that his personal photographic collection contains more than three million pictures of celebrities, with most of them despising him and his relentless endeavors. After Marlon Brando hit him in the face and broke his jaw, he wore a football helmet the next time. But Jackie O was his main fixation. From a judge’s opinion in 1973, Galella

came uncomfortably close in a powerboat to Mrs. Onassis swimming. He often jumped and postured around while taking pictures of her, notably at a theater opening but also on numerous other occasions. He followed a practice of bribing apartment house, restaurant, and nightclub doormen as well as romancing a house keeper to keep him advised of the movements of the family.

Galella even disguised himself as a Greek sailor and made pictures of Onassis sunbathing in the nude on the island of Scorpios. The pictures were later published in Hustler magazine. Galella claimed he was simply exercising his right as a journalist under the First Amendment. In two courtroom decisions (he simply ignored the first decision that ordered he stay at least 25 feet from Onassis), the court said he was guilty of “acts of extremely outrageous conduct.” To avoid a possible 6-year prison term and a fine of $120,000 ($654,000 today), Galella signed an agreement to “never again aim a camera at Mrs. Onassis or her children.” Hedonism? Indeed. Galella once admitted that he made about $20,000 ($109,000 today) a year on pictures of Onassis alone that he sold. In 2010 the documentary film, Smash His Camera, featured his life and career (2010).

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Perry family and their friends experienced a sudden shock to their systems when their smiling faces from a family reunion inundated news and social media sites (Firozi, 2016). In an effort to gain credibility with African Americans, President Donald Trump while a Republican candidate, used the pleasant snapshot next to a headline that proclaimed, “American Families for Trump” in a retweet that included the picture to his followers. The Perrys thought, rightly so, that their privacy had been violated. Eddie Perry noted, “When I saw it, I immediately knew it was political propaganda. Why use it without asking for someone’s permission?” he asked. Why? Because of the old adage (aren’t they all old?), “It is far easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” Obviously, the Trump troopers didn’t think they would be caught so no prior approval was contemplated. Still, within 30 minutes after its release, the source of the image was found. Try it yourself. Pretend you work for Trump and were asked to find a photograph of a smiling African American family. In Google type, “black family” and press the Images tab. You’ll find it. Needless to add, no one from the Trump campaign apologized to the Perry family.

Nowhere is the word “privacy” mentioned in the US Constitution. However, the concept has long been established through numerous court proceedings and opinions. A photojournalist should be aware of the privacy laws that apply to her jurisdiction, but also realize that credibility, a highly prized value, might be lost if ordinary persons or famous persons going about everyday activities are unduly harassed with poor social etiquette, intrusive behavior, and telephoto lenses. Otherwise, permission to take pictures of strangers might become a legal requirement in the future.

Subject and Image Manipulations

As these examples will show, deception has too often been a factor in the production and evaluation of news photographs. Similar to a theatre director influencing actors and the set design of a production, stage-managing is a term used to describe a situation in which a subject and/or a photographer controls the actions and/or arranges objects and people within the frame. As stated, the first stage-managed picture was the self-portrait by Hippolyte Bayard. In the United States, one of the first examples comes from the American Civil War. A photographer under Mathew Brady’s employ, Alexander Gardner made two photographs of the body of 18-year-old Pvt. Andrew Hoge of the 4th Virginia Infantry in Gettysburg (Griffin, 2008). In one, Hoge was shown as a dead sniper lying on his back, his face turned toward the camera, and his rifle propped up against one of the rocks. In the other, Hoge’s body is in a different location. Author Susan Moeller wrote that during the Spanish-American War in Cuba bodies were moved for better compositions. Some creative photographers even re-enacted famous battle scenes in New Jersey backyards and bathtubs.

Arthur Rothstein, a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the American Dust Bowl era, didn’t move a body – he moved a sun-bleached steer skull to grassy and then parched land (Hirsch and Erf, n.d.). The portrait of Florence Thompson and her children is flawed because Dorothea Lange stage-managed Thompson and her children in order to get the iconic photograph, the “Migrant Mother.” Many would say that Lange’s categorical imperative handed down by Roy Stryker, head of the information division of the FSA, to make pictures that showed persons at their worst during the Great Depression excused Lange for setting-up the pictures she made. Perhaps. Certainly, the portrait would not be as powerful if it were not for the compositional and content considerations controlled by Lange.

Another famous picture clouded by controversy was the one taken by Associated Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal, at the summit of Mount Suribachi, a Japanese observation post on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945 (Masoner, 2016). Nevertheless, the picture was a photo op, a stage-managed recreation with a larger flag than the first one erected earlier. Still, watch the film of the flagpole being quickly lifted by the Marines and you should be impressed with Rosenthal’s talent to capture the perfect moment even though he knew it was coming.

More times than is popularly realized, powerful individuals and celebrities control what photographers can and cannot take. If a rock star doesn’t want a photojournalist in the dressing room before a performance, that’s understandable, but when a government employee demands restrictions, the ethics become more problematic. Reported by photojournalists covering the White House, since Ronald Reagan was president, still photographers were not allowed to take pictures of live addresses to the nation because the noise of camera shutters is loud and distracting. Consequently, all the published historical photographs of a president talking to the public were reenactments. For example, when President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Poynter Institute, a leader in journalism training and commentary, reported that a Reuters White House photographer Jason Reed told “how the president made his speech to a single TV camera, then immediately after finishing, he pretended to speak for the still cameras.” Reed explains,

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

(Zhang, 2011)

Most newspapers printed the picture without explaining that the situation was a stage-managed, media event, photo op, set-up.

The Amsterdam-based organization, the World Press Photo Contest, one of the most prestigious in the world, was embroiled in a controversy in 2015 when it awarded and then rescinded its first place award to Italian photographer, Giovanni Troilo (Donadio, 2015). As reported by The New York Times,

The controversy erupted [because of] a photo in which Mr. Troilo had photographed his cousin having sex with a woman in the back of a car, using a remote-control flash to illuminate the steamy back seat. By putting a flash in the car, critics had said, Mr. Troilo effectively staged the photo, violating the rules of the contest.

Michele McNally, a member of the contest’s jury and the director of photography for The New York Times wrote an explanation that addressed the difference between stage-managed and news pictures, “a staged photograph is not acceptable in news pictures that are used to depict real situations and events. Portraiture and fashion and still lifes are of course produced and directed.”

For the World Press Association, the definition is simple, “World Press Photo rules state, ‘staging is defined as something that would not have happened without the photographer’s involvement’” (Donadio, 2015). As with Dorothea Lange’s news picture of Florence Thompson’s situation, it is unethical for photojournalists to stage-manage a scene as if the persons pictured were models in a studio. After all, the contest is called World Press Photo, not World Art Photo.

Most email I receive about picture manipulations has to do with questions about the digital deceptions available through Photoshop software. However, the same effect can be achieved through analog, cut and paste techniques and have been throughout history. In 1857, only 18 years after photography was announced, artist Oscar Rejlander produced a documentary picture of a homeless boy tossing a chestnut in the air (da Cruz, 2013). However, stopping a moving object in mid-air was a technical feat impossible with the slow film and lenses in use at that time. Rejlander produced the effect through the use of a fine thread. In that same year, he also made the controversial, “The Two Ways of Life” (2014), an elaborate story of a young man’s decision to follow good or evil. Thirty separate negatives were combined to produce the single image. A few years later, a popular close-up portrait of Abraham Lincoln seen on the $5 bill was cut and placed on a full-length portrait of Southern statesman, John Calhoun in order to make money after Lincoln’s assassination (“Lincoln-Calhoun,” 2014). Once again, hedonism is the primary philosophy at work.

The Lincoln/Calhoun reunification example starts an informative collection of manipulated images shown on a website maintained by Fourandsix (forensics) Technologies, Inc., a company that authenticates pictures “for personal motivations or for legal verification.” Included in the 200-plus slideshow are notable examples such as the 1982 treatment of Gordon Gahen’s horizontal picture of the Great Pyramids of Giza digitally moved to fit the vertical cover format of National Geographic magazine (“Pyramids of Giza,” n.d.), the 1994 darkening of OJ Simpson’s face by artist Matt Mahurin for Time magazine (“O.J. Simpson cover,” n.d.), the 2003 two-shot combination front page picture printed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times early during the Iraq War by Brian Walski (Van Riper, n.d.), Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider fired after continuing to make exposure and color control changes to images submitted for contests and publication (Winslow, 2006), a cropped and doctored image for a 2010 The Economist cover picture of President Obama seemingly alone and a bit clueless as to how to fix the catastrophic oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico (“Louisiana,” n.d.), and a 2016 advertisement for Snickers candy bars in which 11 purposeful Photoshop errors are featured (Nudd, 2016).

A recent digital manipulation violation, dubbed plagiarism by the headline writer for PetaPixel, was performed by photographer Souvid Datta in 2017. One of the most revered and honored visual reporters in the history of the medium is the American documentarian Mary Ellen Mark (2017). Since her first published work in 1974, Passport, until her last, Tiny: Streetwise Revisited in 2015, she has produced 22 books. Mark’s images have inspired and educated millions and are well known by her many fans and admirers. So, using a part of one of her pictures to add import to your own photograph is a dumb thing to do, right? One of Mark’s most affecting books is the 1981 Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay: Photographs and Text, a classic photojournalism effort concerned with the lives of sex workers in India. Michael Zhang writes that Datta combined part of a photograph from Falkland Road as a background element to his own picture (Zhang, 2017). Datta has won numerous awards and grants for his photography. Why make such a glaring ethical breach? Hedonism. With his reputation shattered, he has not responded to requests for interviews and has taken down his website and his Facebook and Twitter accounts.

One of the latest controversies involves a technique known by photographers for several years. High-dynamic range (HDR) imaging involves superimposing several images taken at different exposures in order to obtain a richly saturated picture. With software now available for smartphones, HDR is a popular Flickr group with more than 100,000 members sharing more than a million photographs (“Everyone’s photos,” n.d.). The technique is considered ethical for art and illustration photography, but for news pictures, not so much. In 2012 an HDR manipulated Washington Post frontpage picture taken by Bill O’Leary of an airplane flying over a bridge that a year earlier was the scene of a plane crash sparked considerable debate among the photojournalism community (Myers, 2012). Most critiques for the use of HDR technology come from the fact that the end result is a combination of at least three pictures. Former NPPA President and Ethics and Standards Committee Chair, John Long (2017) wrote,

HDR images are multiple ‘moments’ that are combined, and this is not what the public expects from news photographs. News photographs are ‘single’ moments. And, while I love the images, I do not think they are appropriate for newspapers except as examples of artwork. They are not what the public understands to be documentary photographs, yet.

Dang. I wish he hadn’t added that last, “yet.” Yet, Long’s learned opinion comes from his understanding of how ethical considerations change over time, cultures, and expectations. In times past, it was perfectly fine to hang a chestnut. Today, a photojournalist would be figuratively hanged for a similar unethical act.

Seeing is believing? With manipulations of all sorts, just because you see something doesn’t mean you should believe it’s true. In fact, as a consumer of images, we should all be educated on the ways of visual persuasion and a bit cynical whenever we see, hear, or read any form of communication. BUT as a communications practitioner, you should also be keenly aware that your viewers and users are not as sophisticated as you in the ways visual messages can be manipulated. As such, your ethics should be beyond reproach.

See Appendix A for a professional’s approach to visual reporting.

Case Studies

Case Study One

One of the most famous photos of all time is Kissing the Sailor, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945. The photo purportedly captures a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York, just after news of Japan’s surrender in World War II was announced. Most people have historically viewed the photo in a frame of celebratory fun. However, others contend that the photo is better viewed as having captured a kind of assault, as the nurse may have been grabbed and kissed against her will. Does it matter which interpretation is correct? What if the nurse was simply caught off guard, but didn’t really feel offended? What if she didn’t mind, but her identity was lost to history, or by the time her identity was rediscovered her memory of the day’s events had changed? Whose ethics matter more – the original photographer’s, the viewer’s, or the publisher’s (Life magazine).

Callahan, M. (June 17, 2012). “The true story behind the iconic V-J Day sailor and ‘nurse’ smooch.” New York Post. Accessed June 28, 2017 from http://nypost.com/2012/06/17/the-true-story-behind-the-iconic-v-j-day-sailor-and-nurse-smooch/.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Two

In 2013, Dashiell Bennett wrote in The Atlantic magazine that “New technology also means that anyone with a plane ticket and a phone can be a freelancer …. That means more competition for stories – and lower wages – but also more reporters who don’t really know what they’re doing.” Bennett further suggested that “war tourism” has become a thing, where individuals vacation in conflict zones seeking thrills or quick fame without thinking through the consequences of their presence. What both of these phenomena have in common is the notion that fame and “the get” (especially the photo of “the get”!) are more important than the story itself. This, in turn, suggests that it is the reporter or storyteller – the one who dodged the bullets – who matters, not the people who suffer the conflict. How does this fact reestablish global power structures? What does it have to do with the visual ethics issues raised in this chapter? Do you think advancing technology will make it better or worse? Are there technological fixes that could improve the ethical quandaries?

Bennett, D. (July 10, 2013). “The life of a war correspondent is even worse than you think.” The Atlantic. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/life-war-correspondent/313463/.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Three

Imagine your friend sends you a video text message of a drunk person falling out of a dorm window at your college, with the text next to it, “Hilarious! LOL!” How would you view and interpret this message? Now, imagine you got the same message from your sister, with the same message saying, “Uh – I see you had too much fun again last night.” Now, imagine you got the same message yet again, this time from your grandmother, with the message, “Be careful!” How would not only the text of each of these messages, but also your relationship with each sender, influence how you interpreted the video and why you were being sent the link to watch? What does this tell you about the nature of objectivity? (Hint: the video hasn’t changed, but its presentation to you has.) Are the senders biased? What is their motivation? Are their motivations the same? Are their relationships with you the same? Does it matter? What does this tell us about media, ethics, photography, videography, framing, and more?

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Annotated Sources

Bock, M.A. (2011). “You really, truly, have to ‘be there’: Video journalism as a social and material construction.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, December, 88, pp. 705–718.

Media convergence means that many news organizations must find new ways to transmit information. Many have turned to video journalism as an easy and cheap way to put stories out. In video journalism, often only one person goes out and does the work of shooting, writing, and editing a story. This article describes this process, and considers how the low resource model of video journalism shifts story narratives away from reporters and toward sources, a simultaneously positive and negative effect.

Brennen, B. (2010). “Photojournalism: Historical dimensions to contemporary debates”, in The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, Stuart Allan (Ed.). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis (Routledge), pp. 71–81.

Many people think photography is the ultimate form of “real” journalism. It goes beyond words to capture what really happened: You can’t argue with a picture. But this has never been as true as people think – what is left out of the frame is sometimes as important as what is in it, for example. And, with digital technology, it is easier than ever to manipulate images and so change the nature of “truth.” Even when these manipulations are not done for ethically sinister ends, they still complicate questions about how photojournalists must balance their ethical duties to professional objectivity – which is always already problematic – with the ways that digital technology allows for an emphasis on emotion in storytelling.

Lester, P.M. (2005). “On mentors, ethics, war, and hurricanes”. Visual Communication Quarterly, pp. 136–145.

Ethical photojournalism emphasizes human stories, even when these human stories are difficult to grapple with. In fact, argues Paul Lester in this article, sometimes what makes a story or a photograph ethically necessary is precisely its difficulty: “A question that is truly ethical deserves a response that addresses the human cost,” he writes. “Ethics can provide good reasons for publishing or airing images that readers and viewers find offensive. Sometimes …. the public simply needs this picture – to have unpleasant information provided to them visually.” This is especially true, he continues, in the context of modern war in the United States, where the tendency is to publish pictures that celebrate American success and downplay the foreign horrors, injuries and civilian deaths that American bombings leave behind. Leaving out these pictures constitute ethical failures of will and a privileging of the American ego over legitimate human suffering that needs to be seen.

Mäenpää, J. (2013). “Photojournalism and the notion of objectivity – The particularity of photography and its relationship with truthfulness”, in Past, Future and Change: Contemporary Analysis of Evolving Mediascapes, Trivundža, I. T. et. al (Eds.). Založba: University of Ljubljana Press, pp. 123–133.

Objectivity is a necessarily tricky term. When it comes to creating news, including news photographs, most people think it means that there is, or there should be, a wholly forthright way to present the news, that is fair and honest, without slant or opinion from reporters. To present a story otherwise is to be biased – to know what the “real” truth is, but to decide to obscure it to tell the story in a particular way. However, objectivity is a social construction of truth – much like a written story must be written from a human point of view, so a photograph must be taken from a human’s vantage point, as well. This requires framing, knowledge, perspective, and assumptions about truth, history, and what the story means. Objectivity is socially organized and defined. This doesn’t make objectivity fake. Rather, the social nature of objectivity, complicates its meaning.

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