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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A Manipulated Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

It's interesting to us that the tainted Reuters war photos have set off such a blogstorm among some pundits. When you think about it, it really should come as no surprise that a Lebanese freelancer might manipulate photos to make them more dramatic (and thus more marketable) or even to support the Lebanese view of the conflict (the population is strongly anti-Israel.)

Should Reuters have done more to ensure that its photography from Lebanon was authentic? Absolutely. Once again, bloggers have done something they do well; they've acted as a watchdog for the limitations of the mainstream media.

But if we could step back from this relatively minor media scandal for a moment, does it really matter:

1. Exactly how much smoke is coming from a bombed area? It's still bombed.

2. Whether dead children are being photographed with actual rescue workers or a "Hezbollah set designer"? They're still dead.

3. Whether a mannequin in the foreground of a photo of Qana was actually found standing up, or was picked up by the photographer?

The horrors of bad photojournalism pale in comparison to the horrors of war. That fact can't be changed by Photoshop, or by the spin-doctor pundits who are exploiting this episode to numb their audiences to the terrible realities of this conflict.

4 Comments:

Scott,
When you compare anything to war, death, life, etc., nothing else really matters.

However, in media -- even news services like Reuters -- it most definitely matters. We expect honesty, if nothing else, from the media. I wasn't in Lebanon that day, so I don't know what really happened.

But, I expect any and all news reports -- from supposedly legitimate news sources -- to be accurate, especially photography.

The added smoke and buildings (I saw the before and after views at LGF) does not do justice to what actually happened then. It makes it looks much worse.
For reference, see LFG:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only

or via tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/m3y6t

Yes, in the scheme of life, this matters little. But, it is still very important -- and disheartening.
Mike

By Michael, at 8/09/2006
While you make an excellent point, I still believe that altering what are already shocking images does matter. The job of the media and photojournalists in particular, is to tell the story so that those who are fortunate enough to be far from the war can come to understand the horror that those people are living every day.

To intentionally alter images is to say to the world "It really isn't all that bad here. So we had to doctor up the images so you think it's as bad as we say." The fact is, we know it's bad. And while yes, the buildings are still burning and the children are still dead, accurately transmitting images is the ONLY job of photojournalists. We trust them to show us what we can't see ourselves and altering images calls that trust and relationship into question. What other images have been altered? It's our job to leave the story for future generations. Don't we owe them the truth?

By Joscelyn, at 8/09/2006
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

By Make the logo bigger, at 8/09/2006
While it’s a valid point to say the goal should be truth in reporting, I’d go further and say maybe that goal state needs to be objectivity.

Much of the content we see has already been filtered. We need that though, because if the American public actually saw the uncensored b-roll, there would be a march on Washington that might actually accomplish something.

So the dead bodies and parts are filtered out.

What we need though is objectivity when it comes to one side of the story getting unfair support to affect a political outcome.

So you end up with extra smoke added into a shot to make it look like more damage was inflicted than there really was.

By Make the logo bigger, at 8/09/2006