On Easter Sunday, 2000, I was enjoying a fresh squeezed orange juice from a diner in downtown Berkeley. It was a typical California morning, clear cyan sky just starting to get hot. I used to tell my friends who lived in tornado and hurricane tormented states and worried that I lived in earthquake country that “the world might end, but at least it will be a sunny day.” Well, the world didn’t end that day, but one of the most notorious news stories for that year, was reported. Early the previous morning, 6-year-old Elián González was snatched from a home in south Florida by INS federal agents and returned to his father in Cuba (Zimmerman, 2017). Alan Diaz, working for the Associated Press, won a Pulitzer Prize for his picture of a terrified Elián taken by machine gun-toting agent Jim Goldman from his uncle’s house.

Elián survived the nightmare crossing of the Florida Straits that killed his mother and 10 of the 12 other refugees on board their sinking boat only to become the centerpiece in a bitter battle between those who wanted him to remain in the United States with Miami relatives and those who wanted him returned to his father in Communist Cuba. Most non-Cubans, including the Clinton administration and the federal courts, believed the 6-year-old should be returned. On the other hand, most Cuban-Americans, including the actor Andy Garcia, the singer/entrepreneur Gloria Estefan and particularly the older, island-born generation of exiles, reflexively anti-Castro in all things, felt strongly that Elián should remain in the US.

Editors in print and screen media were faced with an ethical dilemma (The Washington Post, 2000). With such a complex and political story, should image choices and their positions emphasize the taking of Elián, the reunion of the boy with his father, or reflect a golden mean compromise?

Wendell Cochran (2000), a Freedom Forum Fellow analyzed front page newspaper coverage of the event collected by the Newseum, a Washington DC area museum devoted to journalism history and current practices provided by the Gannett newspaper chain. As Cochran reported,

at 32 of the newspapers that the Newseum received for its front-pages display, the decision was made to run both the gun picture and the father–son reunion portrait. But at most papers, such as The State of Columbia, S.C., the picture of the gun-brandishing agent got by far the most space. Only a few papers, notably The Washington Post and the Newark Star-Ledger, ran the two images at nearly the same size. Six of the Newseum papers ran the father-with-Elián picture but not the gun photo. Three of the newspapers ran the gun picture alone, but not the father–son picture, on page one.

The New York Times employed a creative alternative approach to Aristotle’s golden mean philosophy when it

ran the gun photo on page one in its early edition, but moved it inside for later runs, putting the father–son picture at the top of the page and also running the photo of the agent carrying Elián out of the house.

Finally, El Nuevo Herald, The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language daily exhibited the least objectivity that reflected the high emotions of their readers and the community when editors decided to produce an “extra” edition that featured Diaz’s powerful photograph large with the headline, “¡Que Vergüenza!” or “HOW SHAMEFUL!” Although popular with the Cuban-American residents of Miami, this editorial decision was controversial among many staff members of the newspaper writes Bárbara Gutiérrez (2001), a former executive editor and reader representative for the Miami newspapers. Gutiérrez writes, “some observers in the Herald newsroom were appalled at its brazen editorial tone. They also questioned why El Nuevo Herald chose not to run columns by those who wanted the child to be returned to his father.”

Editors had a difficult choice – emphasize the taking of Elián in a large photograph, as on the cover of Newsweek magazine; feature his reunion with his father, as on the Time cover, or try to balance the two storylines with images about the same size side-by-side, as on The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times front pages. Whichever choice is made, an editor should make a decision after a reasoned discussion with fellow journalists and not for sensational, economic, or political considerations.

Why End with Editing?

Editing concludes this book devoted to visual ethics because it is the most complex issue that visual communicators face. Regardless of whether the purpose and outcome of the visual presentation is for advertising, graphic design, informational graphics, journalism, motion pictures, public relations, television, and the web, editing involves the decision of the initial storyline and subject details, what equipment to use, how much time and funds should be devoted to the project, how the story or illustration will be recorded, the selection of audio and images, the piecing together of storytelling elements into a coherent account or design, how the resulting effort will be shown and with what media, who will be the audience for the display, and what, if any, will be a response if all of those decisions are criticized.

For example, photojournalists are often called upon to record the darkest moments in people’s lives that include the most horrific visual messages one can imagine. Ordinarily, the first editing choice for a photographer arriving at such a scene would be whether to take or not take a picture. There are many reasons why a journalist would not take a photograph of a spot news story. One of the most humanitarian reasons would be if it were possible for the photographer to help those in need of immediate assistance. As long as it were possible for the journalist to help, knows how to help, and is not told to stay out of the way by rescue workers on the scene, it is a moral duty of that journalist to render aid. After such care is given, it is professionally acceptable to resume the role-related duties of a photographer and record the scene. Of course, a photographer might be sensitive to the anguish of the victim and decide not to record an image out of respect for privacy. There may be homeland security restrictions imposed by a government. Another reason for not taking a picture might be if specifically asked to not make a recording. Although most news stories occur in full public view and it is legal to take such pictures in almost all cases, some photojournalists might respect the wish of the source and refrain from taking a picture. There may also be other reasons for not taking pictures: a camera might be defective, a memory card might be full, it might be too dark, bystanders might be in the way, and so on. However, technical problems, either from a broken camera or a lack of experience, are not considered part of an ethical dilemma’s decision-making process. If after all the previous reasons are considered and a decision to take the photograph is made, the only actions available to the photojournalist after are whether to turn in the image to an editor or not.

In attempting to decide whether images should be made available to a media organization, a question should be asked: Does the action fulfill the journalist’s role-related responsibility? A photojournalist is employed by a news organization for the specific purpose of providing facts in (mostly) a visual format (photojournalists are sometimes asked to provide caption information – names, titles, and sometimes observations and quotations). Not providing an image to an editor violates the contract the journalist has with the news entity. Therefore, the only possible action that fulfills the journalist’s role-related responsibility is to give the picture to the editor.

From that point on, the ethical dilemma is lifted from the photojournalist and given to the editor who must decide whether to publish the picture and how it should be presented to the news organization’s audience. In many enlightened news outlets when a potentially controversial picture is being considered, a visual reporter is asked to participate in a newsroom discussion that might include other photographers, the principal reporter of the story and other journalists, and the editor-in-chief and publisher, if they are available. Regardless, the final decision to use the image is, in most cases, now up to the editor and not the photographer. Therefore, the following steps apply to the editor.

An editor, then, has two choices: to publish the picture or not. Any decision to publish or not publish a picture should not be based only on the story of the day. Perhaps there is a larger context for this story that readers and users should know. Perhaps the picture involves a house on fire. In that case, it might be one of several recently started within the city limits. Fire and police officials might suspect an arsonist. Perhaps there is a problem with the electrical grid or natural gas lines within the city that are causing numerous fires. Perhaps no other photograph taken during previous fires were of high “decisive moment” quality as the imagined image. Perhaps children and others in the house were killed or seriously injured. Maybe with high winds the house set other homes in the neighborhood ablaze and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Suppose a mother left her children alone in the house and went next door to drink in the neighborhood bar. Maybe there was a domestic argument and the estranged father set the fire deliberately in a murder-suicide plot. With such larger contexts for a news story, an editor might be inclined to include this strong visual message along with a story on the front page. If the decision by the editor after consultation is to not publish the picture, the authors’ qualms about the scenario – the mother’s plight and the (assumed) negative reaction if she were to see her image published in the next day’s news – are alleviated (although who can say that she would not react equally negatively to a story about the incident).

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario specializes in war and human rights photography in some of the most dangerous places in the world. She regularly works for The New York Times and Time magazine, among others. She has won a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship “genius” award. Her book, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War was published in 2015. That same year she was interviewed for a Radiolab episode, “Sight Unseen” (2015) about a decision she made with her editors at Time in 2009 to not publish photographs that showed the death of a US soldier in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.

It’s almost considered a journalist’s maxim, but it’s probably not written down anywhere, that you never ask permission from a source if you can take or publish a picture. Part of being a professional is that you develop a keen sense of news judgment, especially if the story involves government employees that conduct actions on behalf of its citizens.

Addario took photographs of an unsuccessful attempt by a US medevac team to save the life of Lance Corporal Jonathan Taylor. She knew the pictures were important for the public to see because they showed the ultimate sacrifice soldiers make. Nevertheless, as part of the condition of being an embedded journalist with the medical team, she needed permission from the dead soldier’s family to publish the photographs. Having no alternative, she traveled to Florida to meet with Taylor’s family where she had a heartfelt conversation, but permission was not granted. Still, Addario feels she did the right thing by respecting the family’s wishes and not pushing for publication. Sometimes ethical behavior trumps a professional’s role-related responsibility (“Afghanistan,” 2016).

However, if the choice is made to publish an image, the editor must now decide how it should be presented. The editor has many choices. The image can be published:

If this story were a “one-off” event, a tragedy, but not one within a more complicated context, an editor might be inclined to downplay the story graphically but still report it visually. The justification might be that the unusual nature of the strong photograph requires publication so that readers and viewers know in words and images the victim’s pain and perhaps think of their loved ones (veil of ignorance) and make sure to check the smoke detectors in their own homes (utilitarianism). In that way, the aggregate good is served more by the publication of the image than without it. However, regardless of the best intentions by an editor, critics may complain if the footage was shot by a staff member, if the story is local in its origination, if the still or video is in color, if a viewer sees the image during the morning hours, if the image is shown on a front page or leads a newscast, if there was no context given for the picture or video either through copy or a voice-over, if the image shows people overcome with grief, if a victim’s body is shown, if a body is clearly physically traumatized, if the victim is a child, and if nudity is involved. In fact, if five or more of these conditions apply, editors should prepare themselves for a reader/viewer firestorm. Editors should prepare notes for a column that justifies the decision to use the images. As many letters to the editor and telephone transcripts as possible should be printed. Readers may not agree, but most will respect the decision if the response to the controversy is prompt and the justification is consistent.

The Ethics of Image Selection

In 2017 the social media platform Facebook struggled with a series of gruesome and unforeseen uses of what was thought to be an innocent and entertaining feature introduced to users (“Thai man,” 2017). Facebook Live was meant to display birthdays, weddings, and walk in the woods (no double rainbows please) recorded by users wanting to share these moments with their friends. However, within a week, police reported that Steve Stephens killed a random man walking by his car on a Cleveland street and in Thailand, a man mad at his wife hanged their 11-month-old daughter and then killed himself. Both videos were posted live on Facebook. Words alone are disturbing enough as a Reuters’ reporter describes the Thai murder, “The harrowing footage from Thailand showed Wuttisan Wongtalay tying a rope to his daughter Natalie’s neck before dropping the child, dressed in a bright pink dress, from the rooftop of a deserted building in the seaside town of Phuket.”

As a result of the controversy, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would hire 3,000 employees in addition to the 4,500 already on staff to review the millions of videos uploaded daily by users – a daunting editing chore (Guynn, 2017). Previously, the company relied solely on its two billion members to report objectionable videos, but obviously, such a procedure depends on the kindness of strangers, a not altogether satisfying procedure.

The staff of the Tampa Bay Times created a three-dimensional interactive informational graphic to illustrate the mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando (“Choice and chance,” 2016). The images were based on the actual floor plan of the club and eye-witness and police reports. Titled, “Choice and chance,” the tag line reads, “A gunman enters the Pulse nightclub. Those in his path have only a heartbeat to react.” A computer user is meant to navigate through the infographic by clicking on areas within the cutaway structure where victims are identified with their pictures and text explains various scenarios. For example, above a blue-tinged representation of the club and next to a picture of a woman smiling, the copy reads, “On the dance floor, Brenda Marquez McCool tells her son: Get down. The shooter takes aim.” After a double-click of a mouse, the copy changes to, “Her son lives.” Another double-click and, “She dies” is added. Certainly gruesome mental images are invoked, but the newspaper was praised for its effort because the images shown of the Pulse were architectural renderings without audio effects and avatar-based victims shown shot by the killer as with most video games. Although the decision to not include life-like animated persons was largely based on economic and time constraints, the ultimate editing decisions resulted in a presentation that added to the body of knowledge about the tragedy without being sensational.

Tim Frances (n.d.) writing for the Ethical Journalism Network begins his piece with a strong statement:

Image selection has always been a tricky ethical dilemma for journalists and editors, but in the last few weeks the complex issues arising from a number of high-profile cases have led to criticisms of the media from a wide variety of groups and commentators.

Frances concentrates on horrific video produced by a media savvy terrorist organization of the brutal murders of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Haines. Frances writes of the decision to make the footage available through a website or screen capture still pictures moments before the killing by many print entities. Frances notes that

Journalists need to do more to avoid unwittingly contributing to the spread of objectionable content, and to think more carefully about the hidden messages that the images they publish may be sending and how it may affect the objectivity of a story.

He concludes that some stories with powerful and upsetting visuals should not be made available to the general public. “There are clear ethical lines that need to be drawn,” Frances writes, “and should never be crossed.”

Discretion is often in short supply by editors who are urged to produce viewers of sensational stories by economically-driven publishers and owners, to compete with other outlets no longer confined to cross-town rivals, and to fill the 24/7 news cycle in which the concept of a deadline is as dated as the smell of ink on your fingers after reading a printed newspaper.

Nevertheless, some stories are too important to leave up in a digital cloud without being seen by the ordinary public. In the case of military malfeasance, wrongful actions committed in the name of its citizens, that citizenry has the right and editors have the duty to show its leaders and others at its worse. Christopher Massie (2014) writing in the Columbia Journalism Review interviewed David Remnick, long-time editor of The New Yorker magazine after his decision to run photographs three weeks in a row of Iraqi prisoners tortured by American soldiers within the Abu Ghraib prison. Massie reported that Remnick knows he made the correct decision to devote that much space to the story that was accompanied by the words of Pulitzer Prize journalist Seymour Hersh. Admits Remnick, “If I have any regrets about it, it’s that we didn’t make the space to run more of them.” For Massie, “History appears to have vindicated his decision. The Abu Ghraib photographs and the stories they illustrated became symbols of the corruption of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror,’ and contributed to the ongoing debate about America’s use of torture.”

When confronting situations and photographs of accident and tragedy victims, journalists are tom between the right to tell the story and the right NOT to tell the story. Arguments by well-meaning professional journalists can be made for and against the taking and publishing or the not taking and not publishing of almost any photograph. Curtis MacDougall (1971) in his visually graphic book, News Pictures Fit to Print … Or Are They? argued that news pictures sometimes need to be offensive in order to better educate the public. He wrote, “If it were in the public interest to offend good taste, I would offend good taste.” The problem comes, of course, when communicators disagree on what is in the public’s interest.

A few years ago I was invited to Istanbul, Turkey to speak to a group of photojournalists during a conference concerned with ethical issues. Almost as soon as I arrived at my hotel a photographer gave me a copy of a local newspaper’s coverage that featured a large, color photograph at the top of the page of a woman on her stomach killed by her husband (Haber Turk, 2011). A carving knife was still stuck in her bloody back. Needless to say, my time at the conference was dominated by the questions of whether the photographer should have taken the picture and if it was ethical to publish the gruesome image. I concluded that in America, a visual reporter probably would have taken the picture, but I couldn’t imagine an editor using the image in a similar layout. At most, an editor inclined to use the photo would take a golden mean approach and use it on a website with a strong disclaimer about its content. As MacDougall points out, sometimes the public needs to be offended, but sometimes not.

The reason editing is the final chapter in this textbook is because the decisions made by a visual communication professional determine whether a still or moving image in print or for a screen resides on a cloud account or is actually seen by readers, viewers, and users. Such a decision should not be made quickly as most hedonistically-inspired judgments are criticized for, but over time, with rationality, and in discussion with others. Considering the purpose and impact the images might have on the general public and particularly vulnerable populations should be one of the tools used toward ethical decision-making. Regardless of technology and intent – whether through a single photograph, an advertising campaign, a two-hour motion picture, or a two-minute virtual reality report for persuasive, entertainment, or educational reasons – society deserves judicious deliberation that hopefully guarantees that a presentation is not based solely on hedonistic motivations.

The challenge during this highly technical and political time is that anyone – everyone – can be thought of as an editor and make pictures, with little context and explanations, available to friends, family, and the world. From a kid pretending to be Luke Skywalker in his house to a gruesome murder shown live on Facebook, we live in an age of digital image freedom without restraint or ethical considerations. But that’s a given. Live with it. Now what? Do what has always been done – edit yourself.

Choose carefully what you show and what you visually digest. And always consider the anonymous, faceless, and little understood other. Because in this day and time, there is no longer a separation between you and the media – we are all the media. As editors of what we produce and what we experience, how we use technology has always determined how cultures communicate values and how societies are judged by historians as positive or negative influences upon future generations.

See Appendix A for a professional’s approach to editing challenges.

Case Studies

Case Study One

In 2015, judges disqualified 20 percent of the entries from the “World Press Photo Competition” due to concerns that the photos due to “excessive – and sometimes blatant – post-processing.” For example, in studying the photos and comparing them with their original files, judges noticed that sometimes so much black toning had been used that entire objects disappeared from the frame. So while digital pictures are not film – they are data – the judges felt these photos had to be disqualified for dishonesty.

In response to the controversy, The New York Times ran an online discussion among judges and photographers (a Times editor had been chairwoman of the contest). Below are some of their thoughts. Which one resonates the most with you? What are the ethical considerations at stake?

Michele McNally, the director of photography and an assistant managing editor at Times, said,

Once we saw the evidence, we were shocked. Many of the images we had to disqualify were pictures we all believed in and which we all might have published. But to blatantly add, move around or remove elements of a picture concerns us all, leaving many in the jury to feel we were being cheated, that they were being lied to.

Melissa Lyttle, president of the National Press Photographers Association and a contest judge explained,

It’s a dangerous and slippery slope to travel down when altered work is lauded, and other photojournalists see that as the ideal. It sets a bar that is unreal, unhealthy, and unattainable … . It also reminds me of something I was told as a kid: lying is easy, telling the truth is the hard part.

“Debating the rules and ethics of digital photojournalism.” (February 17, 2015). The New York Times Blogs.

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

Case Study Two

Like almost everything in life, photography is subject to trends and fads; photographers do things one way this year, a different way next year. However, most people are not photographers, but individuals who hire photographers to capture their special events and lives for memory and safekeeping: weddings, births, graduations, important birthday parties, and more. People know that the pictures they get will capture the good and the bad – baby’s sweet smile or the newly wedded couple’s first kiss, alongside Uncle Johnny’s awful blue tuxedo or that awkward seventh grade year when your sister had braces.

“Wedding photography editing trends.” (April 13, 2017). Lydia Royce. Accessed June 30, 2017 from https://www.lydiaroyce.com/blog/wedding-photography-trends-2017.

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

Case Study Three

Steve McCurry, who took one of the most famous photographs of all time, the Afghan Girl cover that appeared once on National Geographic, is famous for something else, too: faking content and manipulating his pictures. Many people became especially upset when they discovered this about McCurry precisely because he is so famous, and has taken photos that people credit with helping them to understand the world. They looked to his work as a way to help them see into places they would never go, and achieve insight about people they would never meet.

The controversy began when someone was looking at one of McCurry’s photos on Instagram noticed an anomaly – a yellow sign post that appeared twice, and the second time it was bleeding into a passerby’s leg. It had clearly been altered. An outcry ensued, because McCurry had never presented his pictures as being subject to digital altering. In response, McCurry explained that rather than being a strict photographer, he would define his work

as visual storytelling, because the pictures have been shot in many places, for many reasons, and in many situations … My photography is my art, and it’s gratifying when people enjoy and appreciate it. I have been fortunate to be able to share my work with people around the world.

In other words, he is not trying to be an objective journalist, but rather present a story with his own point of view, and this includes editing.

Letzter, Rafi. (May 21, 2016). “The ‘Afghan Girl’ photographer faked some of his photos. Does it matter?” Business Insider. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-mccurry-photo-editing-scandal-2016-5.

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

Annotated Sources

Hogan, T. (n.d.). “Ethics and editing.” Photo Review, 50. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/editing/ethics-and-editing.

This article explores to what degree, and when, a photographer should reveal that he or she has edited a photograph. Hogan looks at different types of photographs, such as food and clothing (where editing is commonplace and therefore acceptable), scientific (where any editing must be revealed) and landscape (where the rules are murkier).

Irby, K. (2015). “Photojournalism ethics needs a re-examination.” Poynter. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.poynter.org/2015/photojournalism-ethics-needs-a-reexamination/325217/.

This article raises the point that the ethical standards for photo manipulation were established when photographs were processed in a physical darkroom. Now that most photographs are processed on powerful computers, Irby argues that is time for an update.

RTDNA. (2015). “Guidelines for ethical video and audio editing.” RTDNA. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.rtdna.org/content/guidelines_for_ethical_video_and_audio_editing.

The Radio Television Digital News Association lays out here four ethical guidelines to follow when editing audio and video. They are as follows. First, do not reconstitute the truth. Second, be judicious in your use of music and special sound effects. Third, use photographic and editing special effects sparingly and carefully. And finally, fourth, apply the same careful editing ethics standards to your newscast teases, promotions and headlines that you do for your news stories.

References

Addario, L. (2015). It’s what I do A photographer’s life of love and war. New York: Penguin Press.

“Afghanistan: The rescue brigade.” (2016). Time. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1963443,00.html.

“Choice and chance.” (June 20, 2016). Tampa Bay Times. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/breaking-news/orlando-nightclub-shooting/choice-chance-3d-map/#.

Cochran, W. (April 25, 2000). “Elián raid puts editors on tightrope.” The Freedom Forum Online. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.cgi/4909942/FID2663/common/first%20amendment/www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/04/2000x04x25x07.asp.

Frances, T. (n.d.). “Images of journalism: Why ethics need to be part of the picture.” Ethical Journalism News. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/images-of-journalism-why-ethics-need-to-be-part-of-the-picture.

Gutiérrez, B. (2001). “El Nuevo Herald provides a Latin American take on the news.” Nieman Reports. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://niemanreports.org/articles/el-nuevo-herald-provides-a-latin-american-take-on-the-news/.

Guynn, J. (April 18, 2017). “Zuckerberg: We’re responsible for halting violent content on Facebook.” USA Today. Accessed June 30, 2017 from https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/18/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-live-violent-content/100579530/.

“Haber Turk front page.” (October 7, 2011). Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://paulmartinlester.info/Haber_Turk.jpg.

MacDougall, C.D. (1971). News pictures fit to print … or are they? Decision-making in photojournalism. New York: Journalistic Services.

Massie, C. (August 22, 2014). “To publish or not: James Foley video spotlights media’s tough call.” Columbia Journalism Review. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/to_publish_or_not_foley_video.php.

“Sight Unseen.” (April 28, 2015). Radiolab. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.radiolab.org/story/sight-unseen/.

“Thai man broadcasts baby daughter’s murder live on Facebook.” (April 26, 2017). Reuters. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thailand-facebook-murder-idUKKBN17R1DE.

“The Washington Post front page.” (April 23, 2000). “Raid reunites Elian and father.” Accessed June 30, 2017 from https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2015/05/wapofront.jpg&w=480.

Zimmerman, A. (April 28, 2017). “The saga of Elián Gonzalez: A lost boy who was finally found.” Daily Beast. Accessed June 30, 2017 from http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-saga-of-elian-gonzalez-a-lost-boy-who-was-finally-found.