RE: [Leica] Truth in photojournalism

["bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

You make an excellent point, Larry, about times and standards changing.
Certainly the journalism standards pre and post Vietnam - and Watergate
- - were very, very different. I think we tend to forget that the period
of roughly 1968 to 1984 set a high watermark for American journalism - a
water mark that hadn't been touched before, and certainly isn't being
touched now. That period was a real aberration in the history of
American journalism - where the prevailing tradition has always been a
variation of the tabloid TV. line - if it bleeds, it leads.

However, I would suggest that the NYT is not fighting to get the Kobe
Bryant materials because of the story, but because of the precedents
involved.

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
LRZeitlin@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:57 PM
To: leica-users-digest@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Truth in photojournalism


Eric writes:

<<Your former editor was an idiot.


Journalistic photos should be just as factual as crime scene photos. 

When they start playing around with the facts, they have betrayed the 

profession and their readers. Period. End of story (and hopefully their 

jobs).>>

Eric, 

You are looking at journalism from a 21st. century, post Watergate, post

Enron perspective. Put yourself in the frame of mind of 50 years ago,
just after 
WW2. How many photos of kindly German soldiers did you see, even if they
were 
carrying Leicas? How many peace loving Japanese? Journalism,
photographic or 
print, always reflects the Zeitgeist. If it doesn't, it doesn't sell
newspapers, 
magazines, books, or get air time.

As you well know, the media is a business and you are in competition
with 
other outlets to give the public what it wants. My editor was a very
decent guy 
and a Harvard graduate, to boot. But he did realize that if the buyer
didn't 
grab our paper off the stands, we would all be looking for jobs.
Newspapers in t he 50s were just beginning to feel the impact of
broadcast media. Remember how 
many print news and photo outlet went belly up during the coming years. 
Remember the Telegraph, the Herald Tribune, Look, Life, Colliers,
Coronet, the 
Saturday Evening Post. Milton Berle,  Eric Severide and Walter Cronkhite
killed 
them all. Within 10 years, every photographer I worked with, as well as
most of 
the print journalists had other jobs. Some went into TV, some were in
PR, a 
few became commercial photographers, but most, including me, were in
other 
professions.

The journalistic standards you support hardly reflect today's media
reality. 
Just look at the media lust for release of the Lacy Peterson autopsy or
the 
lawsuit, supported by the NY Times, to get the Kobe Bryant transcripts.
Or the 
Atlanta Journal publishing a picture of the "KISS" on the front page.
Scandal 
and sensationalism sells. A media outlet that forgets it joins the
Saturday 
Evening Post in thhe waste bin of history.

Incidentally - do you have your G5 on line yet?

Larry Z
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