The year is 2010. Many, many years after the first camera was developed to operate with film, photographic devices have made a big leap from analog to digital technologies, replacing strips of film with strips of data stored on a compact memory card. These technological changes have also carried in a new wave of image editing tools. Photoshop is now a globally-recognized program used to edit pictures and photographs alike and many other nifty pieces of software, such as GIMP, Photoscape, and Picasa, exist alongside it to make editing photographs quicker, easier, and overall more efficient. Yet in the photojournalism industry, editing and manipulating photographs submitted to news presses are mostly frowned upon if not completely shot down. The industry has a strict code of conduct for photographers within the industry and reworking these news images is a big no-no.
The reasoning behind this is simple: photojournalism involves giving us an unbiased representation of what is happening at the current place and time. When a photograph is edited in any way, it adds bias. A mere cropping can attach a sense of isolation and loneliness to a photograph(see below), which in turn makes us view the overall image in a different, more biased way than it was originally intended. This in turn can make us view the entire news story in an entirely different light.
Above: (Left) The front cover of The Economist. The photograph is cropped to add an effect of isolation
and has undergone some slight brightness and contrast editing. (Right) The original press photograph.
There are strict guidelines for journalists to follow. Photojournalists must submit photographs that are not edited in any way to impact the composition of the photo. There is a reason for this guideline to exist: journalism is an art that involves reporting the truth journalistically. By adding small touch-ups to photos, the overall impact of the photograph and the story can be drastically altered. In many different press locations, this course of action is unethical because it crosses the guidelines set down for journalists and it does bring an immediate contradiction to the idea of photojournalism. It is also very unacceptable in many presses because of the guidelines set down and because the journalist may risk his or her own credibility by going forth and tapping into the artificial nature of Photoshop.
Above: Two photograph of O.J. Simpson. The photograph on the left is much more unedited. The photograph
on the right has many more alterations and edits to convey a different type of emotion.
Many photojournalists have defended their personal beliefs in altering their images for journalism. This is simply an unecessary justification because journalism is the art of reporting the truth, yet through any sort of manipulation, the photojournalist removes from the truth. Some photojournalists have gone so far as to even recreate their own fantasized scene and pass it off as photojournalism, and although I personally can understand their reasoning behind their actions, I cannot see it being even remotely true photojournalism. It is unacceptable and unethical because it goes against the very nature of journalism and by altering the photograph in any way, it adds bias and removes much neutrality from the original image.
