Power of Photographs and Ethics in Photojournalism

It’s seemed that photo has made a controversy again. April 30th, 2009, AC published news entitled ‘Nikki Catsouras Car Crash Photos and the Dark Side of Humanity on the Web’. The grisly photos of the accident have been distributed through internet even sent to Nikki’s father through email as a joke.

According to Walsh (2006, p. 29), interpreting images is unlike decoding words, it has different effects, image particularly has aesthetic and imaginative level. Aesthetic and imaginative level is differ from one person to another, as for some people the grisly picture is such a joke, but for Nikki’s father of course it would never been a joke.

Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006, p.19) argued, visual express meanings belonging to and structured by cultures in particular society ‘subjectively’ and ‘objectively’. Additionally they explained that images have and need both angles of vision to achieve perspective, and spatial dispositions of elements to achieve meanings of syntactic relations, unlike language.

When the news stated that ‘Nikki Catsouras was killed in a horrible car crash …,’ we can imagine what has happened, but not so much impact. See the picture below or open the link to ‘More pictures of Nikki’s accident’ (warning: some pictures might be very disturbing), and you can feel the different impact.

I think some picture not meant to be public consumption, there is certain rules and ethics that guide the usage of photo in media.

Ethics of Photojournalism

According to Carolynne Burkholder (2009) today, the ethics of photojournalism goes far beyond the ethics of newspaper photo, differ with the straightforward role of old photojournalism. Furthermore Burkholder listed 3 main issue in photojournalism such as manipulation of digital images, intrusion into privacy, and graphic or shocking images.

Based on Baradell and Stack (2008), altering and staging photographs such as retouching, recreate news evens for the photos, and removing or adding object, is unethical. I personally agree with this statement as with the advance technology we have today, manipulate picture is always possible, and manipulation means ‘telling no truth’.

Second is issue with privacy, this issue is related to citizen journalism and paparazzi role. This is a major issue that cannot be restrict fully, again due to technology, anywhere and anytime people can just took any pictures only with cell phone without permission.

Third, in case of shocking images, Society for Professionals in Journalism listed some sample of guidelines regarding dead body picture as below:

• St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch – Avoid use of photos of dead bodies (especially local) unless covered. Of course, there will be exceptions that must be cleared with the managing editor.

In conclusion, picture has power to create big impact (positive and negative). This is why there are some ethics restricted in using of pictures in media in order to encourage the original role of picture in media and eliminate misleading or offending.

References:

Baradell, S & Stack, AD 2008, Photojournalism, technology and ethics: what’s right and wrong today?, viewed 13th June 2009, Black Star Publishing Co., Inc, http://rising.blackstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/photoethics.pdf.

Burkholder, C 2009, Online Journalism Ethics: Photojournalism, viewed 13th June 2009, http://www.journalismethics.ca/online_journalism_ethics/photojournalism.htm.

Engel, H 2009, Nikki Catsouras Car Crash Photos and the Dark Side of Humanity on the Web, viewed 13th June 2009, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1700423/nikki_catsouras_car_crash_photos_and.html?cat=14.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd ed., Routledge, London.

Society for Professional in Journalism 2006, Photojournalism Ethics Guidelines, viewed 13th June 2009, http://www.concernedjournalists.org/photojournalism-ethics-guidelines.

Walsh, M 2006, 'Textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1.