[Leica] Photoshopping for Truth? (and a sneaky real estate FS Friday)

[pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)]

I'm with Tina on this one.  Completely removing people from a photo is 
not meaningful alteration of content?  Excuse me, but that doesn't pass 
the smell test.  The Economist cover is blatant manipulation to say what 
the editor wanted to say, not what was there.  I'm sure Obama has had 
his lonely introspective moments, but this was not one of them.

Cases like this lead to public cynicism about photography, and to the 
absolute prohibitions designed to keep us honest (like no dodging and 
burning). Then those prohibitions get enforced excessively, and 
sometimes get in the way of an honest photographer telling the truth. 
And the "gotcha" nature of our society since Watergate has encouraged 
the destruction of good, honest people who occasionally bent the 
absolute rules.  I've heard just as much about good, honest 
photographers fired for dodging and burning as I have about truly 
dishonest ones getting their just desserts.

I don't have any solutions. It's much simpler to fire anyone who dodges 
or burns in than it is to expect integrity from photographers and 
editors. The Economist was not even trying to tell the truth, they were 
re-arranging the players for illustrative purposes. What actually 
happened at that moment was simply not a consideration.

BTW, it is quite possible to lie simply by cropping.  There was a case 
during the McCarthy era where a picture was introduced into evidence 
showing two people, the person before the committee and a known 
communist, supposedly "proving" their association. The problem was, the 
two didn't know each other, and the picture was cropped from a crowd of 
people getting off a plane.  That's even more dishonest than the 
Economist cover, and it would probably pass the letter of most 
newspapers' codes of ethics.

--Peter