Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/03

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Subject: RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping
From: "bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 14:48:45 -0500

You are saying with a straight 'face' that you think standards are and
should be the same for advertisements - copy, photos, films, carefully
designed to suck you into buying things you don't need and probably
don't want - and news coverage?

And you honestly don't understand the difference between reporting and
writing about an event, a photographing it?

Sorry, but having read your posts over the past several years I cannot
for a minute believe that you are either so naive or so stupid as to
believe that.

A reporter observes things, asks questions, gets answers, decides which
of those observations and answers belong in a story that will convey a
fair and balanced word picture of the event, and then chooses the words
with which he will tell the story. Every one of those steps involve
interpretation and judgments. And journalists are taught that they are
obligated to be honest and fair in making those judgments. Many are -
honest and fair, some are not.

Photographers observe, decide what to photograph, what lens to use, how
to frame the image - what to include and what to cut out - and then
release the shutter. Then the photographer, given the current reliance
on digital images and transition, decides which images to send to the
paper. That's the end of the photographer's role.

A photographer is not supposed to 'edit' images, combining elements of
images, any more than a reporter is supposed to embellish a written
report with descriptions of things he never saw - or wasn't told about
by a witness - or to make up quotes.

What the photographer for the LA Times did was the photo equipment of
making up quotes. He is no different from Janet Cooke, the Washington
Post reporter who won a Pulitzer for a made up story about a  supposed
child heroin addict named Jimmy. And, btw, in that case the Post blew
the whistle on itself and returned the prize.

B. D.




- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Frank
Filippone
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 11:50 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping


So there are 2 standards... one for word journalists, another for Photo
journalists.  Who work for the same paper, submit work for the same
article, etc..... and a third for the advertisers, who do not have to
obey any rules of truth.

Captured is hardly the issue... it is an issue of telling a story
through words or photogrpahs.  That is what a paper does.  What story do
you want to tell ( sell?) ?  How best to convey that story?  What tools
are at your disposal?  Does the method of capture really make a
difference?

Certainly I am no expert ethicist, photojouornalist, nor journalist, nor
do I teach any of those in a profeesional role.  I am a rather simple
person who distrusts  most to all  media just because of the issue of
slanted reporting.  I believe in a single standard, including the
advertisers. Either you tell the whole truth, everywhere in your paper,
or you do not.

Yes, I am a LA Times subscriber.   and yes, they are biased..... and yes
they do tell their slanted part of a story.

Frank Filippone
red735i@earthlink.net


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