Ethical Image in Publishing and Cultural Context in Print Media

There was an ethical publishing issue occurred in Indonesia, last year. According to article in ABC News titled ‘Indonesian weekly apologizes over Last Supper Suharto cover’, Tempo chief editor, Toriq Hadad, was apologizing on their ‘unintended’ mistake which offends Christian community. The cover of Soeharto sits on Jesus position, followed by his children sit on the Jesus’ disciples position was inspired by composition of Leonardo DaVinci’s painting, and not in the context of the last supper event told in the bible.

(Source: http://www.daylife.com/photo/0eFc8M781o4C1)

According to Reep (2006, p.38) ethics is a broad terms which refer to vary principles based on someone’s culture, religion, and personal value. In this case, Toriq Hadad (Muslim) see Leonardo’s last supper only as a piece of famous art, with Jesus inside the picture as a significant leader for his disciples. Then he connected Soeharto, who is a significant leader as President of Republik Indonesia for 32 years, with the role of Jesus.

However, Indonesia is a country that adopted freedom in following any of 5 determined religion, including Christian. Seeing this cover, audience who has different religion (Christian) and personal value with Toriq Hadad, perceived the cover differently as Jesus is not only a significant leader to them, but also as God’s only son who died for them after he had his last supper with His disciples. Last supper itself is a meaningful significant event that is celebrated by Christian every year. Of course Christian community opines that the cover is unethical when Tempo made Soeharto, who has bad reputation because of corruption, as if he equal to Jesus, the God’s only son.

This is proving Reep’s argument that someone who shares different personal value (culture and religion) will define term of ‘ethic’ differently.

I think media can try their best to hold the list of publishing ethics (e.g. to be unbiased; tell the truth), but in term of social ethics (e.g. to minimize harm), there will still be controversy to certain images or writing as the author and the audience interprets differently according their own history, culture, and background.

From the audience side, Schriver (1997, p.367) argued, when readers use available sign they don’t arrive at ‘the meaning’ but rather to guess for the most appropriate meaning to the situation.

In the other hand, the author also has to adjust the content of the piece and put consideration on the potential audience’s demographic and psychographic background. Deni Elliott and Paul Martin Lester (2002) affirmed that visual message has great emotional power, and to deal with ethical aspects of visual presentations, the author has to have reason in using such picture as well as reflect whether the image is likely to cause harm.

In conclusion, issue of image ethics publishing can only be reduced with consideration from both author and audience, although the author role here is bigger as he/she is the one who determine the content of media.

Related link:

• Journalism Code of Ethics
  

References:

AFP 2008, Indonesian weekly apologizes over Last Supper Suharto cover, ABC News, viewed 5th June 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm.

Elliot, D & Lester, PM 2002, Visual Communication and an Ethic for Images, viewed 12th June 2009, http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/imageethic.html.

Reep, DC 2006, Technical Writing: Principles, Strategies, and Readings 6th ed ., Pearson Education, New York.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer, New York.