Dennis Dunleavy

Explicit and Implicit Bias: Pictures and Trust

 

 

There are several forms of favorable and unfavorable bias affecting public perception of the media in terms of digital manipulation. Here's a chart illustrating the possibilities of explicit and implicit bias in attitudes toward photojournalism.

 

Related articles

Bias and Photo Manipulation: Can you tell when a picture is a fake?

Implicit Bias and Why It Matters to the Field of Political Methodology

Imperfect Cognitions on Implicit Bias

Is There Anything We Can Do to Correct for the Fact That We're All a Little Bit Prejudiced?

Not Funny: Newsweek Attacks Romney's Faith

The media doesn't give the public enough credit. It's got a chip on its shoulder when it comes to politics and religion: the public gets treated like idiots.

It's easy to poke fun of politicians and religion -- some news outlets excel at it. In the end, though, cheap shot journalism -- one that is not fair-minded, balanced, or honest -- represents the crumbling of a vital relationship between freedom of expression and democratic civics.

Surveys tell us that distrust of mainstream media remains at the bottom of respectability.

Now, instread of taking the high ground, and treating the public seriously, much of the media stands around wringing its hands. It's business as usual. But making fun of someone's faith is hitting below the belt. In the end, taking on a person's belief system distracts from electing a president with integrity and vision. In the Newsweek article that accompanies the image, the writer even asks if Mormonism is a Christian faith. There is an assumption here based on the image as well as in the reportage that Romney's faith makes him unfit to govern.

The media, like a school yard bully, plays a critical role in giving this nation a president "it" thinks it deserves. Bombast and senstationalism appear tools of the trade.

Trying to understand a complex issue is never easy, but there is no excuse for not giving a candidate a chance to defend themselves. . Not a lot of people understand Mormonism, maye they understand the faith less than they do Islam. Religion is often the target of satire because it is based on differing belief systems. Connecting Romney's faith to his ability to govern undermines the public's ability to assess his competency as a future president.

As many public relations specialists will say, negative press is better than no press at all. But there is something inexpliably wrong here. The digitally altered image of Mitt Romney dancing around is a spin on the current Broadway play "The Book of Mormon." The mash up is supposed to be satrical, and suppose it is. But there is something else at work here. How is possible to make an informed decision about a candidate when the media has already visually defamed them? Yes, it's funny, but selecting a U.S. president is not. The Newsweek cover featuring Romney, the dancing Mormon, deflects from a larger and more critical debate about religion and politics in this country. For decades the media has treated the two forces as separate, but politics and religion are hard wired into our system of discourse and governance.

The first repsonse to a critique such as this one is that wouldn't be the first time politicians have been accosted verbally or visually through media satire. During Obama's campaign he was attacked by the right-wing press as being a Muslim. The smear campaign was aimed planting a seed of doubt -- The attacked attempted to make a connection between the candidate and extremists. Now, Romney's faith is under attack because Mormonism is a mystery for many Americans. When we don't understand something, we make fun of it. That's the way it works. Guilt by association, or in this case faith. 

 

Playing "god" in a digital age: The thin line between art and the subjectivity of photojournalism

Jarle recently commented on the post  "Crazy light", in which I wrote: "We are constantly challenged to make scenes that are less than interesting, more interesting." The question that this raises, however, is when and how are the conventions of honest visual reportage bent for the sake of making images more compelling? 

Jarle continues:

Correct. We all strive to make our photos more interesting. But, ethically and philosophically speaking, isn't this in direct conflict with the "our pictures must always tell the truth" mantra?

There's often a thin line between photojournalism, "art" and subjective, commentary photography.

And, playing the devil's advocate, what's the difference between adding motion blur in Photoshop and using a slow shutter speed?

I'll start out by agreeing with much what Jarle has said here. From a purist perspective, "Straight" photography should be a style of photography that records what the eye witnesses without elaboration or embellishment. For the most part, this form of photography, what is photojournalism today, has remained pretty much true to form. At the same time, it is possible to find quite a few examples of photojournalism from the 1980s to the present day, that deviate from the normal conventions.

Photo Credit: Craig Aurness/National Geographic

As Jarle notes, "ethically and philosophically speaking, isn't this in direct conflict with the "our pictures must always tell the truth" mantra?"

Perhaps.

The image above (shown only partially scanned here) was made in 1987 by Craig Aurness and featured in National Geographic's 100 best pictures (2002).

According to the NPPA Code of Ethics, photojournalists should "Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects." The language here seems a bit vague. The language is vague because ultimately it is up to the photographer or his or her editor to determine what  "accurate" and "comprehensive" really mean within a specific context. Is Aurness' image and honest, fair-minded and "accurate" representation according to National Press Photographers Association guidelines?  In a sense, Aurness has created for the viewer an image that human eye is incapable of seeing. The human eye captures motion at 1/10th of a second, but it also has the capacity to follow a scene without disruption. The optics and mechanics of a camera far exceed the eye in this manner. Therefore, in a case like this, what constitutes a comprehensive and accurate representation?

This issue may actually be more about cultural tastes and values than it is about ethics. Cultural conventions and tastes change over time, but at the heart of any photographer/audience relationship is whether or not the image is deceptive and misleading. Digital manipulation has created a crisis of conscience for many photographers, simply because it has become so cheap, fast, and easy to embellish, construct, and correct images. So much depends on the context in which the picture is made. Motion blur in news photography has been an accepted practice for many photographers for decades. Motion emphases action and helps to make the reading of a scene more meaningful and comprehensive. Just as depth of field can add 3-dimensionality to a two-dimension image, adding motion is a "trompe le oile" or a photographer's way of tricking the eye.  However, is it appropriate or ethical to create motion after the fact -- in PhotoShop?   Most photographers would probably say no, it's unethical to manipulate images in order to produce an effect after the picture was captured.                

                                                               

Stephen Krasemann's 1985 award-winning picture of a leopard running with a recent kill was made before PhotoShop techniques came into vogue.  Today, however, viewers are more sensitive to representations they perceive as manipulated or altered in some way. Whether, the general public perceives motion blur and panning as a manipulation remains to be resolved.

Analyzing the image above, can we say unequivocally that a breach of ethics has occurred? Has the context in which the event took place been manipulated by my choice to employ a slow shutter speed? Is the scene somehow more inaccurate and less comprehensive a representation give the fact that the human eye is limited by how much motion it can see at a given point in time?  Should photojournalists be required to photograph scenes at 1/10th of a second or higher to ensure that they are more truthful to the human eye?

These questions, and so many others, evoke a great deal of thought and emotion. At the same time, this "thin line" between photojournalistic convention and subjective "artistic" approaches mentioned by Jarle remains unresolved, because ultimately the decision resides with what the photographer believes to be right or wrong. So much of our decision to frame, freeze and fix a moment in space and time depends not only on context, but also on our motivation for being there in the first place.

Journalistic ethics still matter even in a corporate media culture

Sometimes there needs to be a distinction between what people believe to be an ethical decision and a matter of taste. There are lots of disturbing images that may be distasteful to some, but not unethical to run in a newspaper or online. Cultural values and taste, not ethics, increasingly play a significant role in the decisions being made today about what picture see the light of day.

There is a tremendous amount of self-censorship going on in the news today. Many papers will not run disturbing images, not because they are afraid to tell the truth, but simply because of the push-back they get from advertisers and the public.

More than 70 percent of Americans feel they no longer can trust the news they get; and, they can't trust the pictures they see either. Reaction to this reality from editors is to be extremely cautious about running anything that might offend someone, especially advertisers.  It wasn't always this way. Editors have been pushed into a corner in terms of how decisions to run controversial images are handled. I imagine that even a "corporate suit" or lawyer may be consulted before a picture is used today.

The impact of poorly made decisions -- ethical ones --  comes down to perception. The currency of journalism has to be believability, creditability and legitimacy. Without creditability the line between what you see in the National Enquirer and what you see in the New York Times is blurred. If you can't believe what you see in the New York Times, why believe anything at all?

One really good example of ethical principle related to the positioning and placement of graphic images is how newspapers around the world handled a graphic picture of the 2004  Madrid bombing.

What I really like about this example iof ethical-decision making is how so many  newspapers came up with different choices in terms of how to display the image. In some papers you can clearly see a severed limb. Is this unethical? Who is to say what "ought to be" here? What is right and what is wrong about displaying the picture as a moment of truth. This is the reality -- 192 people were killed on the train and bodies were blown to pieces.  In other images, editors decided to make radical crops to avoid showing the limb. The editors were probably using the old "breakfast test" here -- a logic that believes that nothing put the front page should make people lose their breakfast over. Is the crop unethical in the sense that they are hiding the bloody truth from readers?

We could look at this from any number of ethical perspectives, including what's in the best interest of the public, what is in the best interest of the advertisers, what is in the best interest of the publishers, or what is in the best interest of the victims of the bombing.  Where do our loyalties lie in running such a disturbing image? What are the consequences of running it? Is it right or wrong to run such a picture? Clearly, all these editors had differing opinions on this issue and we can see them for ourselves here.  

In others cases, editors chose have the image altered or deleted from the frame. To falsify an image by removing an element is, by all photojournalistic standards, unethical. It is unethical because it is a deception. The strange thing about this type of logic is that even though the paper is lying to its readers, it still expects to be believed as a creditable source of information. The editors might argue how the bloody limb does not really contribute all that much to the story, or they might say they were afraid to offend readers. Even if the limb was not deleted from the scene, some editor opted to darken the limb in order to make it blend in with the background. With headlines reading "Massacre" and "Platform of Death," this type of manipulation makes the display almost ironic. Is toning an image to make it more acceptable unethical? Some editors would say it is. In 2003,  Patrick Schneider  of the Charlotte Observer was fired over manipulating the color in some of his award-winning pictures. It appears, then, that tolerance for any type of manipulation has become more rigid in this digital age.

Are there any clear guidelines for editors in these situations? How should newspapers and Web sites deal with graphic images -- images that might offend viewers?  Making ethical decisions in journalism is a critical responsibility of the press. The public deserves a press that is consistently honest and ethically principled. Having an on-call citizenship committee of peers and the public to help editors decide what people might perceive as right or wrong about using a disturbing image is a good idea. Some publications do have such committees to call upon.  Further, communicating with the public about the ethics of using such images is also an important issue. Journalists need to educate the public about their responsibilities as eye-witnesses to acts of great compassion as well as acts of terrible injustice. Today, much of the corporate/consolidated media, however, avoids such accountability when. Therefore, it is no wonder the public has lost confidence in the press when it comes down to making decisions that require insight, empathy, and ethical reasoning.

The art of deception: Pictures can lie, but people lie a lot more

Photo Credits: (missiles) Sepah News photo via Agence France-Presse/NY Times, (Powell)  The Associated Press

Lying is a moral choice people make. Individuals lie. Governments lie -- some lie more than others. The truth is, lying is a fact of life.

Ethicist Sissela Bok puts it this way, "Deception and violence -- these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings" (Lying: Moral choice in public and private life, 1978, New York: Vintage, p. 19).

In this age of photo ops and digital photographic manipulation, the "deliberate assault" on human beings appears unremitting. Deception leads to violence against humanity. In fact, when was the last time a lie got us out of a war? This article compares two forms of deception used by individuals and government to shape public opinion – the digitally altered image and the photo op.  

Who can forget one of the first major digital deceptions -- the 1992 OJ Simpson mug shot on the cover of Time magazine?

Despite the uproar caused by the darkening of Simpson's skin, the manipulation appeared an anomaly -- a fluke produced by an artist who decided to take creative license with a mug shot.

In a 2006 survey I conducted to help clarify what professionals consider to photo manipulation, I used three different definitions and asked respondents to agree or disagree.

When questioned, “I define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of a picture after it is made through electronic means,” nearly 90 percent of respondents agree with the statement. 

In a similar way, when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original,” again, the majority agrees with the definition.

However when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the picture better aesthetically,” responses greatly varied.

In this case, 10 percent strongly agree, while 27 percent agree. The remaining 62 percent remain either neutral on the definition or disagree with the statement. As one respondent suggests, “This is a small part of photo digital manipulation, not necessarily THE definition. I would guess this is where the amateur checks in--cleaning up redeye or other little messy details that are easily fixed in this digital world.”

At the same time, when presented the definition, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting,” a majority affirmed the statement.

This raises an issue of semantics, since making “the picture better aesthetically” and making “the picture more visually interesting” seem, at least to me, fairly closely related. In fact, one participant asks, “Can we define the difference 'manipulation' vs. 'image enhancement/post-processing' (tone, color, contrast, brightness, etc.).

Perhaps this is where the line begins to be drawn for many people. For decades, post-production processes have accepted the enhancement through dodging and burning, yet today event long-standing antecedent practices appear to be under the magnifying glass.

Recently, major news outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Los Angles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, used a photograph of an Iranian missile launch. The photograph turned out to be digitally altered. Headlines accompanying the picture showing four long-range missiles coming off pads were written, true to form, to both seduce as well as edify readers.

The logic here is that if big media buys into a lie, then the public will follow. Not so, thanks to an intrepid army of bombastic bloggers ready to pounce on the slightest journalistic misstep, the truth was revealed. The Iranian government's official news agency manipulated the image. Stop the presses. Why should surprise anyone that Iran would use deception in its current high stakes game of threats against the West?

Pictures, after all, have been used to provoke conflicts for a very long time. In 1897, media baron William Randolph Hearst allegedly told his artist in Cuba, Frederick Remington, who was apparently bored with his assignment for lack of action, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Even though Hearst disputed the quote, there is something prescient in the statement. History tells us that Hearst made a moral choice to provoke a conflict with Spain. After the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, Hearst's newspaper and others fabricated stories about Spanish atrocities against civilians in Cuba and Puerto to force intervention. Hearst's moral choice to lie was motivated mostly by blind ambition. Hearst needed to build up his media empire. What better way to build a news business than by inventing a war?  However, Iran's motivation to manipulate images of its defense system is purely rhetorical -- a way of flipping off the United States after all the chest thumping it has been getting from the White House. The picture is a rhetorical act because it traffics in persuasion and ideology. Lying is a mind game. In game theory, credibility and veracity are cornerstones of influencing an opponent's choices. Bloggers, anxious to make a little news of their own, called Iran's digital bluff, but the game is far from over. In fronting Iran's play, bloggers may have actually escalated tensions between the countries and forced us closer to war.

Different kinds of Deception

While digital photo manipulation is an explicit lie, there are other forms of deception that are far more insidious.

These lies, as illustrated in the photo op pictured above, are more ambiguous and at times even more deceitful.  When former Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a vial containing a model of anthrax during it was to convince the world that Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction presented a clear and present danger. The vial was a prop used to signify peril and that if the U.S. failed to rid the world of Hussein we could only imagine the worse possible scenario. Powell's visual cues were supported by statements such as "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" and "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Although the U.N. Security Council didn't buy Powell's rhetoric, the U.S. press did.  Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan notes the White House press corps were "complicit enablers" in the buildup to the war in Iraq. Much of the media at the time were eager to have "good" visuals to accompany White House rhetoric and Powell's waving of the pseudo biological weapon worked like a charm. The picture appeared on the pages of most U.S. newspapers and magazines and helped to sell the war to the American public.

While Iran's digital altered missile image was an explicit lie, Powell's pretentious viral rattling theatrics, however, was a more insidious form of deception. The moral choices made at this level are more ambiguous and implicit. Moreover, it is harder to detect the lies when they are presented as "official" news. When political strategists try to spin messages they rely heavily on educated guesses about what they can get away with selling to the American public.

The press often appear to unabashedly play by the rules of the game, and the political image-makers own the rule book. Therefore, much of what we see has been managed to provide predictable responses. Powell's visit to the U.N. was a pseudo-event far more interested in winning hearts and minds than it was about telling the truth.

Staged pseudo-events are part of our political culture and rarely called into question by the public. But there also appears to be greater tolerance for verbal shock and awe over pseudo-events that use physically altered images. Robert Warren explains Daniel Boorstin's theory of the pseudo-event as "a manufactured happening that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy through media exposure."

Stirring up public fear through the influence of government propaganda as played out in the press, be it by Iran or the U.S., continues to deliberately assault human beings around the world through deceit and violence.

Despite overly self-absorbed and obsessed with smoking guns theory bloggers are acting as change agents in this country. Bloggers challenge journalists to live up their implicit promise to “afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.” Moreover, bloggers are setting the tone for more engaged and visually sophisticated audiences. Bloggers are now beginning to speak truth to power by calling into question the deceptive practices committed by institutions of authority in this country.

The truth hurts: "Reality is a lie"

Photo Credit: New York Times

It was only a matter of time before an increasingly number of computer scientists began  wrapped their heads around digital imaging in a big way, at least in their spare time. That's exactly what Carlo Baldassi, a student in computational neuroscience did, after looking at some pictures of his girlfriend that appeared too constrained and out of proportion. Baldassi has created an automatic photo-editing software tool that always the user to stretch an image without it looking stretched. Peter Wayner's article in The New York Times quotes Baldassi as saying, "Reality is a lie." Nice quote perhaps, but the implications are much more far-reaching as software such as the one Baldassi has made becomes commonplace.

Wayner observes:

Automated tools like Mr. Baldassi’s are changing the editing of photography by making it possible for anyone to tweak a picture, delete unwanted items or even combine the best aspects of several similar pictures into one.

The tools are giving everyone the ability of the Stalin-era propagandists, who edited the photographic record of history by deleting people who fell out of favor.

Wayner's last statement is a bit troubling. Sure, we have the tools now to seamlessly stretch the truth, but do we need to? In my on-going survey on digital manipulation more than 40 percent of respondents indicated that they could tell when a picture had been altered.

2007-2008 snapshot of the photo manipulation survey related to whether people can tell if a picture has been altered.   2006-2007: Note that the sample sizes differ considerably.


During my time surveying people about digital photo manipulation, a fairly high percentage of people report they can tell when a picture has been altered. I find this opinion interesting, because in my own experience I am not as skillful.

In my own experience, I find myself having less time to carefully scrutinize pictures. I do  assume, though, that there is an increase in altered images in the media with the introduction of digital technologies, but because of the volume of pictures flooding our consciousness, I tend, like many people, to just scan images quickly. I tend to judge the authenticity of a picture on the context and source in which it is disseminated. For example, I would tend to trust the authority of a news image in The New York Times over an advertising image any day. This means that I wouldn't typically spend time looking for manipulated images in The New York Times, while I just assume that most advertising images have been altered to varying degrees.

Getting back to Baldassi's software, which is based on the seam carving work of Shai Avidan and  Ariel Shamir, it makes sense that many of these tools will become commonly accepted by people over time. In the future, we will just expect that the images we see have been enhanced in some way and that the notion of objective reality is nothing more than a passing fancy.    

Photojournalist as humanitarian: Bringing the message home

Marcus Bleasdale/VII on Media Storm

Recenlty, I showed some of the multimedia journalism being produced and presented by Brian Storm at the MediaStorm Web site. Halfway through a slideshow on drug abuse one student got up to leave the room. I stopped the presentation in anticipation of such a strong response as a way of emphasizing how important the work being presented online is becoming. One question that was raised in class, was why we don't see this sort of work on television, especially cable. On cable television there is no shortage of violence or sex, but when it's real and presented in both still and video, with a photojournalist's voice narrating the story the message is different. Many of the projects one might watch on MediaStorm fail to be commercially viable. The content is either too close-to-the-bone disturbing or it doesn't appeal to the wider target audiences commercial interest covet.

Marcus Bleasdale's recent work on Media Storm about the Democratic Republic of Congo is a case in point. If we didn't know or care about what is happening to this African nation before Bleasdale's voice and pictures, it's time we did. Advocacy photojournalism has a strong tradition in our culture and there is no reason why it should go away, even if every thing seems to be about making money and consumption. The main reason why so many people go into photojournalism is that they can tell stories that make other people care.

Bleasdale's photography wrenches reality into our consciousness in ways other media cannot do. The images speak to the powerlessness of a people, especially the children, that are forced into lives of desperation and despair so that leaders in government and the warlords can reap enormous profits. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 5 million have died in the DRC since 1998. The country seems to be feeding off its own flesh, yet international outrage about the conditions there seldom enter our world view.   

Oh! Baby: Obama does the baby lift -- long live the photo cliché

Photo Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Hail to the cliché.

Just when pictures of Barack Obama on the campaign trail were all looking about the same -- like they could have been taken in Iowa or New Hampshire -- up pops Jonathan Ernst's picture of the candidate holding a baby. Candidates holding and kissing babies is a widely accepted trope in visual arsenal of political campaigns. Babies make good props for the media. Babies aren't controversial and they show the candidate in as a compassionate human being. That said, this picture may tell us something more about Obama then anything he says from up on the soap box. First and foremost, even though candidates and babies are cultural commodities, this picture shows some genuine emotion. It's not the usual display of stoicism we've become accustomed to.

Photo Credit: CBS/via AP

Political campaigns increasingly rely as much on depicting a candidate's personality as much as they do on getting substantiative messages across to voters. It's all part of the package.

Making candidates appear affable and emotional in public is a major part of a campaign's strategy. Of course, it is difficult to always manage how a politician will appear in the media and the reactions they engender, but one thing remains constant -- the universality of the visual cliché.

Digital obliterators: How the media sanitizes our news

The media, it has been said, may not tell us what to think, but it does tell us how to think about things. When the media frames a story in a particular way it also helps to shape our perceptions about an event or an issue. The recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan is no exception. Now we are learning that some media crossed the line when major networks digitally blurred the background on images showing the devastation surrounding the assassination.

Obliterating reality and censoring the truth is probably the most damaging thing the mainstream media can do to itself. It is interesting, that in a culture of violent movies and video games, the  gatekeepers at the major networks felt compelled to clean up and sanitize the message before sending it out to the public. Was the self-censorship caused by a concern over offending our sensibilities or was it because the networks didn't want to rankle their corporate sponsors and possibly see a dip in their ratings? In this instance, the media is no better than any other instrument of censorship. Mano Singham observes:

Propaganda is far more effective when there is no overt control or censorship of journalists but where they can be persuaded to self-censor, because then everyone, reporters and reading public alike, think that what they are getting is 'objective' news and are thus more likely to believe it. Implementing such a sophisticated propaganda model requires some overt pressure initially, but reporters and editors quickly learn what they can and cannot say if they want to advance their careers.

It is far easily to leave all this mess behind and retreat into the chaos of our own lives, but images speak to us, especially those that are powerful enough to rock us out of the deep sleep of our day-to-day worlds.

Wonkette, the popular political buzz blog, got it right in writing about the assassination photos:

I think we see a hell of a lot of graphic fake violence at the movies, in video games and on the news and we know that it’s not real and there’s so much of it that it has lost its power to offend. But, when it comes to real violence to real people, we all turn away and thus make it less real than the fake violence. These are pictures of real violence, and of the horrible things people all over the world will do to one another, and it isn’t conveyed by seeing the reaction of another person. This look of this man’s pain, and shock, and horror doesn’t do justice to the carnage at his feet, even as real as that pain on his face is.

Emotional images such as those made in Pakistan should make us stop, drop, and roll, as if we were on fire. However, when exposed to such pictures from around the world, especially given the feeling that the media is holding back the reality from us, all we are left is a sense of  powerlessness, disdain, and apathy.

The pictures showing graphic violence and the extermination of human life should lead us to action.  But what action can we take to make sense of the senseless bloodshed in the world? Should we take to the streets, march on Washington, gather in communities to discuss alternatives, or come together in other acts of non-violent protest? Will our elected representatives really listen to our concerns?

Pictures, have throughout history, helped to move humanity into action. The dead at Gettysburg,  the squaller of 19th century tenement life, child labor, and the dust bowl, are all example of pictures that help to raise awareness about issues.

Today, unfortunately, I am not confident this holds true. How many pictures of starving African babies do we need to see before we feel pressed into action to stop the madness? Now we are presented an image, one that is being sanitized for our protection, of a man crying out in grief and shock in the middle of a sea of blood and bodies. Will this picture soften our hearts and make us work for peace in the world.  Inevitably, some people that truly feel the pain of this man and his country enough to take action, but what of the majority? 

I return to the image of the distraught man repeatedly not out of repulsion or morbid interest, but out of fear. I fear that the day will come, or has already come if you think about 9/11 or incidents of school violence, that I too could be this man. That this man is already inside me.

The reality of the media sanitizing our news should be another wakeup call -- we should care -- we must care -- about the images we see. We must recognize that these images form a  constellation of points on our horizons -- they create for us the conditions of knowing we need in order to make decisions about our lives and the world in which we live.

Handshakes, hugs and hoopla -- What pictures don't tell us

Photo Credit: Jim Young/Reuters

In a political cycle of relentless photo-ops, countless handshakes, hugs and flag-waving hoopla, it is refreshing to see beyond the candidates to the more human side of life. Young's picture, showing two tired children holding campaign signs in Winterset, Iowa on December 22, offers some comic relief at a time when everything we see and hear out of Iowa or New Hampshire these days seems to little more than create more apathy toward the political process. Thousands of images are transmitted to news organizations each day, but what do they really say about a candidate?

One assumption is that the pictures say very little about the candidate's ability to lead a nation. Instead, what most of the images represent are more about the what the campaigns and media thinks the audience wants to see.  At times, there is a glimpse of a human side of a candidate, but for the overwhelming majority of pictures just tastes like a spoonful of cold canned peas. The candidates attempt to project and protect his or her political image, something often proscribed by media handlers. The media, for their part, dutifully carry the message and image, out in the public domain. But increasingly, the message lands flat or is met with incredulity and suspicion.

Pictures frame, freeze and fix a moment in time -- a moment, which has traditionally been grated a lot of credit as a faithful representation of reality and truth.  In a political climate where there seems to be more similarities than differences between those seeking power in this country, pictures become a form of mind-numbing anesthesia.

The same thing could be said for other events.  How many images have we seen now of President Bush visiting the hospital beds of soldiers injured in Iraq.  Is there anything significant in Bush's patting the head of a bed-ridden Army Sgt. John Wayne Cornell of Lansing, Mich., and posing for a photo-op?


Photo Credit: White House

One way of looking at the image is that president would like us to see how much he really cares about the soldiers fighting in the Middle East.  Another way of looking at the picture is as propaganda: Go to Iraq, get hurt, get a pat on the head from the Commander-In-Chief.

It's hard not to be a little disrespectful or cynical at times when photo-ops masquerade as reality. In fact, this critique should not be viewed as another Bush-bashing ploy. It doesn't matter who's in office -- the response, and the pictures that represent the response, are almost always predictable.

Images, Symbols and Power

Photo Credits: Jim Cole/AP, Jose Luis Magana/AP

What can we learn from looking at pictures? The signification of these two recent images of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is striking. On the left, we see a close-up of Clinton caught in a "real" and unflattering moment, while on the right, we get what one might expect from most media managed events -- the santized moment, flags, the powerful gesture.

Human beings are symbol-making animals. We use symbols to make sense of the world and photographs increasingly contribute to meaning and consciousness. When we think of objects, ideas, and constructs, our brain transforms these things into symbols so that we can share our experiences with others. Symbols connect us through language. When we use the words such as reality, love, peace, justice, terror, poverty, pride, or patriotism, images come to mind – images associated through convention with the words we choose to describe our every day experiences. Kenneth Burke reminds us that when we think of reality, what we are relying on has been built up for us through our “symbol systems.” Burke observes, “What is our ‘reality’ for today (beyond the paper-thin line of our own particular lives) but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present?”

When we view an image in the media we are given to substituting the meaning of the image with something connotative and symbolic. A presidential candidate stands before a giant American flag, which in turn produces a symbolic relationship. The candidate is by proximity of the flag immediately associated with notions of patriotism, loyalty, duty, public service and sacrifice. The flag is reduces to a backdrop – a symbol that condenses and naturalizes how the viewer should look upon the candidate. Symbolicity is emphasized through the shape, size and colors of the flag. Burke may argue that the language (words) used to describe this scene act as a sort of screen or filter on meaning.

Many years ago, in a cathedral in Texas, there was a wall covered with pictures and petitions from the faithful. The first Gulf War was underway and people used the wall as a commonplace for pictures of loved ones, alive and deceased – a symbolic collective prayer. Images hold within their frames many symbols.

Looking again at the variety of images made during Hillary Clinton's campaign stops, it is hard not to imagine the intensity and determination of the candidates as they are beseiged under the glare of the media. At the same time, we are inudated by "the clutter" of symbols and struggle to understand and draw meaning from one picture to the next.

Another Day, Another Slam on Journalistic Integrity

Jack Shafer's article yesterday in Slate Magazine explores the dangers publishers have been encountering with their reliance on using stock photos. Shafer points out that with today's access to web-based stock picture agencies it has become increasingly difficult to make sure the context in which pictures are used match the words. This happened recently when Nature Medicine ran a picture accompanying a story about foster children in Harlem being used as human guinea pigs for HIV drugs. The stock photo used to illustrate the article turned out to be from an orphanage in Ethiopia. Ooops. 

Photo Credit: Slate

Stuff happens, but at what cost?

In an age of instant communication, as well as the pressures of commerce, design decisions run the risk of further encouraging the common public perception that the media cares more about shock value and making money than it does about getting the story straight.  All apologies aside, the damage is what it is -- people aren't always buying into the notion that what they see and read can be trusted.
Shafer notes:

Picking the "wrong" photo for a magazine story was a lot harder back in the old days, before the Web-based photo agencies got going. The job of picking images usually went to experienced photo editors, people who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of photography and photographers. They had to assign photos or know how to find the picture they needed in the fat books of stock pix they kept on their shelves.

Sidebar: Protecting journalists, lots of talk and little action

It's in the news today. The International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday said it has commitments from seven countries, including the United States, to protect journalists in war zones.

The countries are promising to educate soldiers and security forces about international humanitarian law, which ensures the safety of journalists. Ironically, while the U.S. signed on to the pledge the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-partisan  human right organization,  found that the U.S. military is responsible for the deaths of 16 journalists in Iraq.  Spain also indicted three U.S. soldiers last April for the 2003 killing of a Spanish journalist in a Baghdad Hotel. 

This doesn't mean that the deaths of journalists at the hands of Americans are intentional.  After all, journalists are known to get in the way at times.

The big picture question to ask, then, is why now? 

Why has the Red Cross pushed for a reaffirmation of Geneva Convention guidelines on the safety of journalists?

Perhaps it is because during the past two years more than 125 journalists have been killed trying to do their jobs.

or

Perhaps, that because in 2006,  The United Nations Security Council forcefully condemned the frequency of violent attacks against journalists in many part of the world.

or (acknowledging the most cynical possibility)

Perhaps, because people just don't give a damn about the press or the media conglomerates that own the news these days. Maybe people are just to busy with their every day lives to care.  Where's the public outrage as attacks against journalists escalate?  Many people, especially younger Americans, express their distrust in the media because they see journalists as pawns of industry and government.  From this perspective, it is easy to see the cynicism  seep into public conscious.  The truth is that lots of countries will talk a great game about how they want to protect the press in conflict zones. The reality is, unfortunately, that it is very hard for them to really do anything about it.

Other links:

The Committee to Protect Journalists

Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions (SPJ)

Ex-Nightly News anchor, Tom Brokaw campaigns for free press (MSNBC)

Iraq: Journalists in Danger (CPJ)

In the juggernaut of public opinion: Candidates to the Media -- 'Keep your Distance'

Photo Credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham at a campaign stop
in Iowa. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post writes about
how candidates are keeping their distance from the media.

Media critic, Howard Kurtz, has an insightful piece from inside the machine today. Kurtz suggests that media following Hillary Clinton's campaign are kept at arm's length from the candidate. The Clinton campaign apparently fears being sidetracked from off the "daily sound byte" message or from doing a Howard Dean. What is clear, is that the political process as well as the media's role in it continues to disintegrate.  The cultural condition of spinning and spoon feeding pictures and words to Americans is alive and well on the campaign trail. Clinton has apparently mastered the great media brush-off.

Kurtz notes:

"Such is life spent trailing the Clinton juggernaut, where reporters can generally get close enough to watch but no further, as if separated from the candidate by an invisible sheet of glass."

“The dangers can’t be overstated”: Journalists in the cross-hairs

A recent survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism highlights the challenges of covering the war in Iraq. In the study, reporters concluded that "even the basics of getting the story are remarkably difficult."

Over the past four years, journalists have been increasingly forced into perilous situations. Nearly 57 percent of respondents in the survey  report that Iraqi staff members working for them have either been killed or kidnapped in the past year. Many more Iraqi staff continue to be threatened. Even carrying a notebook in Iraq today can be a death sentence for Iraqis working for Western news operations. The survey shows that 87 percent of staff cannot identify themselves as working for news organizations.

Overall, journalists, according to the report, have a positive assessment of their coverage, but admit that they come up short when reporting on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

What can Americans expect from news coverage of Iraq in such a climate of fear and violence?  Our perspective and perception of events in Iraq continues to be hindered  by an increasing lack of access to information. At best, news organizations continue to rely upon journalists embedded with U.S. and coalition forces for information -- not exactly the best environment for reporting.

Photo Digital Manipulation End of the Year Survey

Since August of 2006, I have been collecting responses from readers concerning attitudes toward photo digital manipulation.

In order to sample changing attitudes over time, I am relaunching the survey and will begin to compare results. Anyone can take the survey and all participation is voluntary, confidential, and anonymous. For instance, a respondent's IP address is not stored in the survey results, which protects the identity of the individual to some extent.

The intention of the survey is to understand the way people think about digital manipulation over time. In 2006, more than 735 people weighed in on the issue. One of the questions I would like to track is whether or not people can tell if a picture has been manipulated. Many people believed they could. Is that claim still true a year later? Let's find out.

Click Here to take survey

In the line of fire: Military wants photojournalist to be tried in Iraq

For nearly 19 months, the U.S. military has held Bilal Hussein, right, an Iraqi Associated Press photographer, in detention for allededly taking part in insurgent activities, including making bombs.

Hussein, who was seized by the military in April of 2006, is now caught in a battle not only for his freedom, but for the rights of a free press. The government alleges that Hussein had links to terrorists and that an Iraqi court to decide his fate. AP, meanwhile, feels they have sufficient evidence to counter the allegations.

The ramifications of Hussein's trial will be far-reaching.  At issue here, beyond  the photographer's life and livelihood, is how the U.S. press has become so extraordinarily dependent upon native in-country staffers and stringers for its news. It's not clear how well Americans really understand how much of the news is actually produced by foreign journalists.  Typically, wire services, in places like Iraq, have to outsource their news gathering capabilities, especially photojournalism, to people with better command of the language and the culture. 

The at the core of this issue is one of trust and credibility. In August 2006, for instance, Reuters discovered that one of its stringers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated images during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebannon.  The Hajj incident has had the effect of placing doubt in the minds of an already skeptical public about the authenticity and credibility of the news we receive from overseas. Utlimately, it is hoped that justice and truth will prevail -- however, in times of war -- both of these ideals are at risk when power and politics are at stake.

Conspicuous spectacles

Photo credit: AP/Joel Page, Cheryl Senter

It's very interesting to follow the course of the presidential campaign through the pictures photojournalists submit for publication. The images above show Hillary Rodham-Clinton, D-NY, in various states of fighting off the symptoms of a cold. The question to ask is why are these images important in reporting the news. Does a candidate wiping her nose constitute news or might it be considered by some viewers as offensive or even tasteless? More importantly are the photographs made of other candidates equally as revealing -- or are we to assume that this sort of reportage is just another journalistic cheap shot?

We know that pictures help to construct our reality and shape our perception of individuals.Therefore, the notion of a conspicuous spectacle relates well to torrent of visual messages we receive daily about the candidates and their lives on the campaign trail.

Are we to assume that images of candidate Clinton, blowing her nose or holding back a cough, help to frame the individual as more human and vulnerable? Could we interpret these pictures on a deeper level -- one suggesting that she may not even be fit to be president? 

These images are "fish in the barrel" pictures in that the photographer is very much limited by access to capturing truly intimate moments. In a way, these are attempts by the photographer to either "make something out of nothing" or to put forth an honest effort showing the candidate at their most vulnerable.

All images are persuasive determinants  in constructing what may  eventually become normalized or accepted as reality. Can we, in this instance, consider for a moment, the determinacy of such campaign pictures -- images that do not always cast a candidate in the best of lights?  Do such images, pander toward sensationalism-- where the candidate-celeb is brought before the public specter of scrutiny as somehow weaker than her male opponents?

We cannot fault the photojournalists for honestly representing what is put before their lenses in a public forum. These images, like all the others of the candidates, have a collective impact -- a gestalt. In the torrential flood of stump speech pictures, it will be curious to track and compare just how the types of images made of the candidates differ in terms of what they explicitly and implicitly suggest about a candidate's ability to lead a democracy.   

 

Even Extremists Use Photoshop: Osama bin Laden's makeover

Photo Credit: AP via As-Sahab

It appears that Osama bin Laden's propagandists have been taking some Photoshop lessons lately.

Typically, over the past few years, Bin Laden's screen shots have been less than aesthetically interesting or eye-catching.

Now, as the extremist continues his war of words against all-things capitalistic, especially America, there's someone cleaning up his image, complete with feathered knock-outs and dynamic new background colors. Instead of bin Laden's usual mountain gorilla look, his publicists are now busy photoshopping him to appear other-worldly and prophet-ish.

In some ways, it might be concluded that either bin Laden's stature among his followers is gaining ground, or that his political operatives are finding it increasingly necessary to elevate him through visual representations that make him appear more holy and dignified. Either way, it is curious to consider the sophistication of techniques used to sway opinion and project an increasingly mythic and metaphorical likeness of the figure over time.

Newspaper promotes photo digital manipulation with readers

The Boston Globe is encouraging readers to send in Photoshopped versions of their favorvite Red Sox players for publication on its Website. Dozens of poster-type images have been e-mailed to the Globe and then posted Online. All in good fun? I guess.

The bigger issue here is that in an age of questioning the credibility and authenticity of digital images, especially in journalism, why shouldn't the newspaper think twice about promoting the practice of photo fakery?

Encouraging the public to rip-off copyright protected images from the Internet and then digitally manipulate them does very little to help people understand the importance of intellectual property rights as well as ethics in a digital age.

The Globe has been careful to make sure it covers itself though. According to a notice on the submission page, the Globe reminds readers that they must have the appropriate permission to use any of the artwork submitted and that the work is original.

By submitting your Photoshop image(s) to Boston.com, you agree that such Photoshop image(s) and the accompanying information will become the property of Boston.com and you grant Boston.com permission to publicly display and use the Photoshop image(s) in any form or media for any and all purposes. You also warrant that (i) the Photoshop image is your original work, or is properly licensed, and does not violate the copyright or any other personal or property right of any third party, and (ii) you have obtained any and all releases and permissions necessary for our use. Your submission also allows Boston.com to edit, crop or adjust the colors of the image(s) on an as needed basis.

This raises the issue of what constitutes a copyright violation when the creator is appropriating other images to construct a collage.

It's highly unlikely that the creator of this Photoshop masterpiece actually owns the rights to the faces of the ballpayers in the collage. Therefore, it appears that the newspaper must be viewing the submitted work as illustrations and not pictures composed of multiple works that are copyright protected.

All in all, the practice of encouraging readers to take material off the Web and alter it, speaks to the slippery slope we are traveling on in terms of not only the veracity of what is seen, but of how really easy it is to manipulate how we see it.

Votojournalism: Visual Spin from Stumpurbia

Techpresident.com, a blog tracking the online activities of presidential wannabees, offers a glimpse into how the social web is increasingly influencing the political process in this country.

One fascinating aspect to this site is a space dedicated to pictures using the Flickr photo-sharing site. If a picture is tagged with a candidates name, Techpresident links to it. In other words, if you are a campaign rally, all the images you upload to Flickr could have the potential to influence public perception of a candidate. It's a new twist on spin from stumpurbia.

Credit: Photo by Alex Witkowicz on Flickr

What makes this site significant is how it is using the phrase "Votojournalism" to refer to citizen photojournalism. As the site explains:

'We call it "votojournalism" because it is a prime example of voter generated content, photojournalism by the people."

According to the corporate web consultancy firm iDionome,  votojournalism is “The excellent portmanteau of Voter and Photojournalism, for voter-generated content where users post pictures of the candidates on the campaign trail, online.”

Techpresident's pitch offers an alternative to the professional spin applied to typical media coverage of a candidate's life during a campaign. As the pitch reads:

"You'll find lots of candid shots here, including those of people attending campaign events, along with the presidentials in sometimes unguarded moments."

The reach of the media spotlight on candidates is now expanding exponentially with the possibilities of the Internet and the social web. Anyone with a camera phone is potentially a "votojournalist", looking to catch that one decisive "tell-all" moment that may influence a candidate's chances to become president.

Although this activity may be beneficial for democracy -- now have more "eyes" than ever before scrutinizing the political process -- we also must be  careful not to fall for the redactive nature of photography. The concern here is that the torrent of images we have to deal with on a daily basis tends to reduce complex events into bytes and bits. In turn, an unvetted and relentless stream of images appears intimidating and overwhelming for many people to process. Or, in other words, our visual memory banks is in danger of running over. Votojournalism, then, is creating another visual memory stream for people to contend with in the complex history of the political process. Our visual memory of events is altered by a relentless stream of image -- images that simplify and reduce the complexities of our times to an informational/representational system that appears increasingly biased and unvetted.

At the same time, the burden of responsibility falls to the consumer to not be sucked into the potential for abuse by propagandists, spin doctors, and unscrupulous people with a flair for Photoshop. As Washington Post writer Jose Antonio Vargas reports, “For months now, there's been a disconnect between the campaign that's being waged offline and the one fought online. And the digital divide is only one part of that gulf. Political support and political fundraising don't match up on the Web either.”

This unvetted stream of "votojournalism" is not only exciting to see develop but it inevitably creates enormous challenges for its competition, the mainstream media.

In fact, we can assume the coming reality will be that a "votojournalist"  or anyone on the campaign staff or close to a candidate will actually have much better access than many of their professional counterparts in the mainstream media. The level of access afforded a votojournalist, with the camera and the Internet, may actually have the advantage of scooping accredited news sources . 

While many professional photojournalists find themselves penned into some highly controlled media staging area, others, particularly supporters with a ticket to $1,000-a-plate fund raiser will have free reign and access to make pictures and upload as nauseum.

The photo-op is now moving away from the high theatrics of stage management and is becoming a primary "free-for-all" conduit for pictures and video --  inevitably ending up on sites like Flickr, MySpace, or Facebook.

It follows, then, that these same images will make there way into the mainstream press under some auspicious byline called "submitted photo."

Sarkozy's spare tire: French President gets digital makeover in Paris Match

There's a great deal of concern in the media these days about the power to deceive readers through the manipulation of news images. Sherry Ricchiarrdi writes in a recent American Journalism Review article, "Thanks to Photoshop, it’s awfully easy to manipulate photographs, as a number of recent scandals make painfully clear. Misuse of the technology poses a serious threat to photojournalism’s credibility."

We tend to think of the problem as one that has mostly occurred in the U.S., but that just doesn't make sense. Media has gone global, and with it so too do all the problems of a digital age. 

Recently, France has been dealing with a media scandal involving the retouching of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's picture showing him on vacation in the United States. The scandal has set off a debate about the president's close ties to the publisher of one of the country's most influential newspapers, Paris Match.

What would make a newspaper manipulate a picture like this? Can it be that the editors decided that the people of France weren't quite ready to see their new president hauling around a few extra pounds? Or, did the editors decide that it was easier to remove a little excess flab than it would be to deal with falling out of favor with the most powerful people in the country? Did the editors get a call from their owner telling them not to make Sarkozy look bad -- that there was an image to uphold and that it was important to show the president looking healthy and active?

The truth may actually be much more complicated than simply removing elements from a picture.

Like its U.S. counterparts, French media is taking a hit these days in terms of public confidence over its responsibility to reporting what they see and hear -- not what they think people want to see and hear.

Thomas Seymat, a former student from France, explains that the newspaper has been defending itself against charges of photo digital manipulation by claiming that they had done no wrong. Editors claim that the picture made the president look heavier than he actually is because of the camera angle, cast shadows, and poor printing technique.

Thomas notes:

"The thing that makes the story more scandalous is that it is not the first time that something like this has happened with this newspaper. Last year, Paris Match put in front page a photo of Cecilia Sarkozy (Not yet France's first lady) with her lover, in the street of NYC. The editor in chief of Paris Match was fired shortly after, the unofficial reason being that the owner of the newspaper is a very intimate friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. Arnaud Lagardere, a major share-holder of Paris Match, even publicly called him [Sarkozy] "my brother").... which only illustrates once again that collusion between politicians and the press is threatening its freedom and reliability."

The Paris Match controversy demonstrates once again the power of images in the construction and shaping of public perception. However, when the truth is finally discovered what we are left with is a feeling that pictures aren't the only things being manipulated here. Over all, there is a heightened public awareness of the media's power over us. The silver lining to all of this, is that with all of the scandals over digital manipulation in the press these days, people are become better consumers of information. We are learning not to trust everything we see, which may seem unfortunate on the surface. However, in the long run, understanding the relationship between what we see and what we know benefits everyone.

In a recent survey respondents were asked if "it's okay for the media to digitally alter pictures of celebrities to make them look healthier, younger, or thinner. More than 85 percent disagree or strongly disagree that it is wrong.

Even if this all seems to be a matter of common sense,  the nagging reality is that the number of incidents related to digital photo manipulation doesn't seem to be on the decline. Therefore, in order to survive in a digital age, we must become more sophisticated visual communicators -- more digitally literate. We must learn to call upon the media to never violate the social contract it builds with its public, as a force outside the reach of self-interests and party politics.

 

The Dark Arts: Photography in the age of algorithms and the new realities of digital manipulation

Credit: Carnegie Mellon Graphics

Photography and the Dark Arts? Look out Harry Potter.

James Hays and Jexei Efros are really smart people. Hays and Efros, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon, report they have invented a whole new way of patching up pictures by "borrowing" pieces of other pictures from the web. They call the method "scene completion", but others will differ them, especially when it comes to how the "scene" gets completed -- by taking content from other pictures off the web.

Credit: Carnegie Mellon Graphics 
Scene Completion Using Millions of Photographs

By using the data base of the World Web, with millions of images to pick from, Hays and Efros, have figured out that they can splice slices of reality in a seamless process that differ from previous methods.

The interesting point here is how science, which seeks to solve a problem, often complicates and creates even more problems.

 

As the image engineers explain:

"Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labeling by the user. Unlike existing image completion methods, our algorithm can generate a diverse set of image completions and we allow users to select among them.  We demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing image completion approaches."

To their credit, Hays and Efros, have just moved electronic photo manipulation to a whole new level -- they have given the photo industry a bigger gun in which to pass off composites, fakes, and illustrations as wondrous illusions of reality. Not that photography hasn't been dealing with these issues since its inception. It is just that this new process contributes to already growing ways in which digital shenanigans get passed off as "truthful" representations of reality. I can see the Pentagon, politicians, advertising industry, and even more conventional mainstream news operations clamoring for the software.  It's all part of the slippery slope of image production in the 21th Century.

Not only are the possibilities of digital manipulation so much greater with this process, there is also the very big question as to what will constitute copyright infringement. Even if Hays and Efros use 1/1,000,000 th of a picture made by someone else, even if they borrow a few pixels here and there without asking permission or paying the owner for that 1/1,000,000th, would they be infringing on someone's copyright? What is fair use when there's a program out scanning images on the web in order to make a whole new image? 

It should not come as no great surprise that science would eventually figure out a way to semantically and seamlessly reconstruct images. We already have these processes in place.

However, the implications of this new method add fuel to the already burning argument that pictures could never be trusted as faithful reflections of reality. What you get is not what was seen, but rather only a few pixels here and there of possibly millions of other images.

Thanks to Daniel Sato for the inspiration and the link.

Sell newspapers, pictures, and legs

What do leggy women, newspapers, and sexual attraction have in common?

Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry's leading trade publication, may need a little sensitivity training these days after people concerned with the objectification of women take a look at their latest promotion.

In an announcement for a photo contest, the organization ran an ad (see above) that can read in several different ways. Signification is the process of making sense of the things we see by interrogating the visual cues and associations represented. What we have here are faceless women, sets of legs, and newspapers without pictures.

The image is accompanied by the headline, "Papers without pictures just aren't very sexy." The associations implied suggest a relationship between newspaper photos, women and sex. We can assume that the people who approved such an advertisement were probably male, although it is hard to say with any assurance.

Annual survey on photo manipulation: When to draw the line on digitally altered images

As our visual culture becomes accustomed to digital photography, are people becoming more apathetic about the digital alteration of pictures in the media? Will people come to expect that most of the pictures they view in the media today have been electronically enhanced in some way? If so, how will this acceptance, impact journalism and photography as a source of information and reportage?

Last year, I surveyed photographers about their attitudes and perceptions concerning the digital manipulation of photographs, especially within the context of news reportage. This year, I would like to continue to ask respondents about the alternation of images with a brand new survey. However, the questions in this survey are far broader with the hope of collecting responses from a wider audience. Just how serious are people about photo digital manipulation?

Click Here to take the survey

What I discovered last year was that only about half of the more than 480 respondents believed they could detect a picture when it was digitally altered. Only 6 percent strongly agreed with the statement, "I can tell when a photograph has been altered."  At the same time,  85 percent of the respondent agreed that they had seen a digitally manipulated picture in the media within the last five years.

This year's annual survey is different in that it seeks to understand how people define photo digital manipulation. The survey also explores how significant digital manipulation is as an issue in society. Further, at the bottom of each question is an area for comments, which is something last year's survey lacked.  Broad participation in this survey is encouraged as it is not only designed for professionals, but for enthusiasts as well.

Not a pretty picture: When Ad and News Messages Collide

There are times when technology gets the better of us. Yesterday, for example,  the technology driving the dynamic web design at MTV.com created irony when video from the Virgina Tech killing spree became juxtaposed against an advertisement promoting the new "Smokin' Aces"  movie -- a film that promises to be full of bloodshed and mayhem.

Dynamic web content refers to an interactive design that places elements on a page in response to various contexts. However, this type of interactivity can also end up sending conflictive messages, especially since studies show that viewers do not navigate web content the same way in which they would read in a traditionanl print format.

To its credit, given the fact that technology can bump heads with social and cultural values, MTV is aware that issues such as this one can arise from time to time.

According to MTV, its news staff makes an effort to "....move on removing such inappropriate juxtapositions...Unfortunately, the system did not react as quickly as we did.  We continue to do our best balancing the inevitable byproducts of dynamism."

At the same time, there appears to be a critical flaw in the increasingly blurry lines between news and advertising content these days on the web -- one that places a premium on making money through advertising over the common sense and good judgment of providing reader's with news.

Kate Zimmerman writes about another juxtaposition of questionable ad placement on Yahoo -- one which a reader views a story about the shootings next to an advertisement for L.L. Bean.

 

Zimmerman notes:

"The contextual ads shown against this story are almost completely irrelevant, if not inappropriate - further proof that contextual ad networks need human editors (or at the very least, a way for advertisers to safeguard against poor placement)."

Blurring the lines: What's real?

Mike Musgrove in the Washington Post has a good take on the continuing debate about all those darn "fake" photos out there these days.

The writer lists some of the high-tech features available today in cameras such as,  "red-eye" reduction and the elimination of facial blemishes and pounds. Of course, there are even more features to come,  all of which will enhance our experiences, fix and frame reality for us,  and make the world a better place for our children.

Musgrove contends, "Digitally enhanced photos are starting to bump up against the real world. A few news photographers have lost their jobs for digitally tinkering with their shots, but there's weirder stuff afoot as well."

Without beating a dead pixel here, it's worthwhile considering the larger societal implications of a culture that will actually have to face up to the fact that photography has never been an objective process. Today, digital technology is forcing us to realize that we've been in denial about the process of making pictures since its inception. 

We like to think that what we are seeing in a picture is real. Sure, a picture is real, but it also a social construction --  a contrivance of will, an act of authority, a whim, muse, or something that tickles our fancy.   This is what's  real about photography. When we freeze, fix, and frame a moment in time and space we are essentially excluding a million other moments that are equally as real. A picture is real only in the sense that it represents a fragment of reality. If we alter a fragment of the real in some way during or after a picture is made how much are we altering reality? 

This is a particularly sticky problem for some of us when we begin to realize how the whole logic surrounding the notion of reality or what is real is flawed.

Pictures serve personal and public needs, and by doing so they exist contently within the realm of subjectivity.

Science and technology makes it possible to re-render reality in and out of the camera -- correct the objectionable -- make the imperfect, perfect.

Ultimately, what this really means is that in an imperfect world, digital technology makes it possible for life to appear picture perfect.

Ethics and Public Faith in Journalism Takes a Hit, Again

At a time when public confidence in journalism continues to slip, questionable professional practices or lapses in personal judgment are having as much an impact on the industry as they have on a given individual.

Last month, when, Toledo Blade photographer Allan Detrich digitally altered an image to make it less distracting, his actions, whether intentional or accidental, provide yet even more fuel to the fire of public distrust. Apparently, Detrich's  creative license may prove to extend beyond this one incident.

We now have reached a point in our society when, at times, the media seems determined to abdicate a portion of its commitment to the truth, for expediency.

As a representative of an industry already under intense public scrutiny, Detrich, who recently resigned from the newspaper, now joins a growing list of photojournalists, such as Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider, Lebanese freelancer Adnan Hajj, and Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski, who have succumbed in recent years to the temptations of digital technology. 

The big question these incidents raise is simple: Why do some photographers feel compelled to manipulate images, while others live with what they get? Getting to the answer, however, is far more complex and may reside actually in a culture, which excels in competition and individualism.

People do not like being lied to. Digital manipulation, the addition or subtraction of contributing or distracting elements in a frame, is a type of fraud and lying.

Jonathan Wallace observes, “The reason that I hate lies is because, like you, I wish to navigate carefully through life, and to do so I must be able to calculate my true position. When you lie to me, you know your position but you have given me false data which obscures mine.”

Journalists have always been moral agents of culture and societal tastes. News content falls within an informational/representational system that changes over time. Journalism has its good times and its bad times throughout history. Within this informational/representational system, however, truth has always remained a core journalistic virtue. Journalists must struggle to obtain and maintain truth in reportage because every situation they encounter is slightly different – always presenting differing degrees of moral complexity. 

The act of altering an image to correct a deficiency may seem innocent enough on the surface, but deeper down the shift from fact to fiction signifies a moral choice that is informed by either ignorance or duplicity.   Regardless of motive or rationale, Detrich’s case should remind us that journalists function to serve the public good through a series of professional and societal expectations and obligations that are imposed upon them.

In this digital age, these expectations and obligations become intensified to the point, where opportunities to make things look better or to get the better of the competition are just too easy.

Ultimately, it seems not to matter how rigorous and vigilant the media is in detecting and ousting those who lie through their photography and reporting. The damage is done -- public faith, once again, is lost. 

Decisive ambiquity: How pictures slice life into nasty little fragments of reality

Photo Credit: AP/Jim Cole

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York reacts to seeing and old friend during a campaign stop at the National Education Association New Hampshire, in Concord, N.H., Friday, March 30, 2007.

As the race for the White House heats up, the role images play in shaping a candidate's public perception becomes increasingly critical. So much of modern-day campaigning seems determined by the candidate's "image" is presented to the public. In the heavily media mediated carnival of American politics today, there is always a chance that one candidate will come off looking like a jackass in the horse race.  For some candidates, one bad picture can destroy all hope of victory.

Ever since Howard Dean's seemingly uninhibited emotional display in the last election, one would think that candidates would be hyper-sensitive about how they appeared in public, especially with the media following every move.

Social interaction theorist Erving Goffman, in his book "The Presentation of Self in Everday Life, describes the interaction between people as a kind of "performance" -- an "activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants." Goffman's analysis of social behavior is an appropriate way of thinking about how politicians act in public.

The question this raises, especially in studying the image of Hillary Clinton's startled expression, is whether or not politicians regard the media as participants in the performance. In other words, do politicians come to a point where they ignore the presence of the media covering them. Clearly, there appears to be little room for spontaneity in terms of how expressive candidates can be in front of the cameras.

Despite the pretense of "truth" that comes with  fixing and framing a moment in time, there is always a feeling of internal conflict in terms of slicing life into fragments, especially when the moment misrepresents an individual's complex personality.  Some critics of the media might view the picture of Ms. Clinton as a biased "cheap shot", while others might defend it as the "truth."

In a recent thread concerning the objectivity of news photographs, Rishi's comments have a great deal of substance.

Rishi observes:

We have come to regard photographs as 'true' or 'truthful' representations of acts based on our faith in media reportage(questionable). At the turn of the 20th century & even much later, a photograph along with a news piece in a newspaper provided a window into the happening of that act, which in turn strengthened our belief in the authenticity of the photograph. But we have come a long way now and photographs may not necessarily depict truth, but rather attempt to provide a grip around social, cultural & political scenarios based on the levels of our visual literacy."

 

Tears of shame: Shame on us

Photo Credit: Ronald Reagan by David Hume Kennerly/Tear by Tim O'Brien

In today's hyper-mediated world of images, truth has become a casualty of commerce.

It is more important today, it would seem, to sell us an image representing a concocted truth, than it is to make images that honestly portray reality and that earnestly speak truth to power.

Ever since an altered picture of OJ Simpson appeared on the cover of TIME nearly 15 years ago, magazine editors and designers have been continually pushing the boundaries of believability and authenticity.

It's now appears acceptable to use images that once functioned within the context of news as something far more rhetorical in nature.  From a rhetorical perspective, the the Reagan Team image is loaded with meaning. Therefore, the interpretation of the image goes far beyond the literal and moves in the realm of the figurative and symbolic. 

We've seen this over and again when iconic images such as Rosenthal's "Iwo Jima flag raising" and Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" are altered to illustrate a specific idea or concept.

In other words, editors have been extending the meaning of news images for a very long time  by adding and subtracting elements, changing the tone, and most especially altering the context. In this instance, it's interesting to note that the editors credited not only the photographer for the portrait of Reagan (David Hume Kennerly), but also the photographer who made the image of the tear drop (Tim O'Brien) running down Reagan's cheek.

For photographer Patrick Ryan the manipulation does a disservice to a profession that has seeks to maintain its credibility in the eyes of the public.
"I'm insulted and, frankly, disappointed," Ryan write on a post to the National Press Photographers Association list-serve. 

Ryan continues:

"I expected better. Our credibility is being challenged more and more everyday, and Time goes and adds fuel to the fire. If you are going to clearly alter the intent of a photograph, you better label it an illustration or such."

From a sociological perspective, the public's capacity to distinguish between  legitimate and an altered new pictures is unclear. In today's hyper-saturated visual culture people have developed a tolerance for ambiguity between what is real and what it fake. 

As time blurs perception and reality , Reagan's tear may be perceived as authentic by many.  The collage presents Reagan as something other than what we have come to understand through  his media-mediated public persona.

In this sense, TIME, with its altered image, constructs how we think about Reagan. Even lacking verisimilitude, the assemblage of the two distinct visual elements -- Ronald Reagan face and  Ronald Reagan's tear -- is confounding.   

As Ryan contends, "I used to trust the content of images in print, but with the ease of Photoshop, etc., it's harder and harder to believe what I see. Time is supposed to be above that."

Another interesting point concerning this illustration is the placement of the tear.  In the picture, the tear seems to be away from the tear duct.  For example, in this image from "Feed the Children," it is clear that tears begin to well up at the tear duct.

Photo Credit: Feed the Children

The design of the TIME cover is clearly driven by the rationale of aesthetics and persuasive determinacy. It has long been argued that magazine covers do not function primarily as news. Instead, many designers will tell you,   magazine covers are designed to attract attention and sell magazines.

Writing on the same NPPA list-serve thread Gregory David Stempel sums up this issue well when he observes:

"Keep in mind, we have reached a point in our society where the foremost goal of any business (including "the news") is share holder satisfaction. And to that end it appears, anything goes. Just about everyone in the developed economies of this planet have figured out a way to justify almost anything they desire. We have without much hesitation, compromised truth, integrity, ethics, decency and fairness."

The emotional war within: Listening to pictures of pain and suffering

How much of what we know about the human costs of war do we let in to impact us in profound ways?

Although there are remarkable and powerful images of war to remind us of the unthinkable horrors human beings continue to suffer, it appears that for the most part we rarely truly learn from them.

Although we appear fascinated by the sacrifice people endure for a cause, noble or ignoble, most of  the pictures that remind us of those sacrifices seem all about ignored.

The pictures we see of dead and wounded civilians and soliders in times of conflict become social artifacts that may or may not stir our emotions or move us to action.

In recent times, we have seen how Joe Rosenthal's picture of a band of Marines raising a flag on a tiny island in the Pacific could mobilize millions of Americans in the war effort during WWII.

Photo Credit: Joseph Rosenthal/World Wide Photos/AP

 

Later, we have seen how another  image could have just the opposite affect, as Nick Ut's picture of a young girl running naked down a road after she was burned in an aerial attack on her village by the South Vietnamese Air Force, with U.S. support.

 

Photo Credit: Nick Ut/AP

 

Images such as those by Rosenthal and Ut remain embedded in our collective consciousness because of how often they are repeated and recollected in our visual culture. When we speak of patriotism and sacrifice, or, of so-called the "good war", the Iwo Jima flag raising image seems to always come to the forefront of our common discourse. When we speak of atrocities and failed U.S. foreign policy, so too, do we find referencing the incident at Trang Bang, Vietnam, where a little girl and nations were changed forever. 

Recently, a photographer in Southern Illinois has made an image, or a series of images, that should become emblematic of what critics are beginning to call the current quagmire in Iraq. 

  Photo Credit: Nina Berman/Redux

The picture by Nina Berman of Redux, is a wedding portrait of a Marine who had been burned over much of his body. Although badly disfigured from a bomb blast in Iraq, his facial features all but melted away to bone, Ty Ziegel lives to tell his story to the world.

The picture, as simple as a picture can be, makes us want to listen. The picture makes us cry out in empathy, muster hope in the presence of such incredible human spirit and strength, or simply cringe in disgust. In the end, however, it is the couples resolve that makes us want to listen.

In a recent article in Salon.com, photographer Berman suggests, "What makes pictures interesting is that they provide the space for the viewers to contemplate."

Contemplation is a form of listening to our innermost feelings about the things we see.  Contemplation, if given  space,  moves us to act on our feelings. To contemplate the explicit and implicit meaning of Berman's image means to imagine our own lives transformed by war as Ty Ziegel's life has been.

Thomas  Merton, the Trappist monk and writer, once observed that  "True contemplation is inseparable from life and from the dynamism of life--which includes work, creation, production, fruitfulness, and above all love. "

Merton continues:

"Contemplation is not to be thought of as a separate department of life, cut off from all man's other interests and superseding them. It is the very fullness of a fully integrated life. It is the crown of life and all life's activities."

Berman's wedding portrait has received acclaim in photojournalism. In fact, it won top honors in the portrait category of the World Press Photo competition this year. But it is not the picture, as an object or artifact, that should be admired and remembered. What should be contemplated here, first and foremost, is that the judges recognize the saliency and value of the content within the frame.  The space Berman speaks of here moves beyond the rancor of congressional debates and presidential pomposity. The space Berman speaks of  gets to the core of some of the most essential qualities of being human -- love, loyalty, hope, and reconciliation.   Can a picture evoke the "big" ideas expressed here? Apparently so.

How will history remember Ty Ziegel's wedding picture? How could this   unassuming portrait of a wedding couple become the next Iwo Jima or Trang Bang in the collective memory of wars past and present?

What distinguishes the pictures is less a matter of aesthetics and more a more of politics. For the Iwo Jima picture the U.S. government adopted the image as mass marketed it as the embodiment of the "good war." In the case of the Trang Bang picture, the anti-war movement of the 1970s embraced  symbolism of the moment as proof of the so-called "dirty little war."

Pictures, in iconic terms, extend beyond the meaning of occurrences in several ways. Iconic pictures, such as the hooded prisoner of Abu Ghraib, signify ideological bench marks in history -- turning points -- in the cultural  memory of  American society.

It is only through the assimilation of an ideological benchmark image into our visual culture as a form of a larger societal discourse that an iconic permanance can emerge. Although the Berman image has been seen now by ten of thousands of web-watchers, it will not be until we see the picture on billboards, war posters, and TV screens that its status as an iconic image will endure as a product of social consciousness. 

Crossing the line: Press censorship in the War Zone

The U.S. military is confirming that soldiers had deleted media photographs and video after an incident which killed up to 10 civilians on Sunday.

Rahmat Gul, a photographer working for the Associated Press, said U.S. soldiers took his camera from him in order to delete pictures he made showing the wreckage of a destroyed four-wheel drive vehicle. The soldiers then returned the camera. A TV crew covering the same incident also had tape deleted.

Later,  a  U.S. military spokesperson said "The journalists had gone beyond a security perimeter and had been asked to remove their images to "protect the integrity of the investigation."

Even if the soldiers deleted the pictures, a simple $30 digital picture software recovery program could most likely restore the files. So, why did the soldiers want to stop the press from making pictures of the scene?

Could the Marines have been attempting to cover up the incident?

The Marines say no. In fact, the official response is that the soldiers were trying to keep the images from the world because they feared the scene had been tampered with prior to the arrival of the media.  Major William Mitchell later told AFP, "We have reminded our forces in the area that only in extreme circumstances is this practice condoned."

This is an interesting remark coming from a person of power, because in a war zone all circumstances are EXTREME.  In a split second, then,  how are soldiers, who are caught in the heat of battle or the aftermath of something else terrible, expected to make decisions about what or what not to allow the media to cover?

Given the recent history of this conflict, along with all the bad press the military is getting, Mitchell's logic is fuzzy and may be impossible to carry out in the future. In other words, what the major and others are telling us here is that we'll try really hard not to censor the press, but we can't guarantee it.  The big picture reality is that no matter what the truth may be in sorting this mess out, the wrong message has already been sent to the world.

For the U.S. military, another firestorm of criticism may be waiting to erupt as early reports of the incident raise more questions than answers about how the troops dealt with the press on the scene. 

It could be that any public relations efforts by the Marines may be already too late to restore public perception and faith in the war effort given the legacy of charges of abuse aimed at U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unfinished business: art and life in the age of instant

In January 2004, Kodak announced it would stop making film cameras. Faced with the reality that film was rapidly being pushed aside by digital technologies, George Eastman’s company was in turmoil. In fact, in the first years of the new century, the firm cut more than 22,000 jobs.

For Kodak, the writing had been on the wall for some time as digital cameras were already outselling their cousins in film by leaps and bounds. In 2003, more than 50 million digital cameras were sold, an increase of 64 percent from the previous year.

Today, the digital camera market is flattening out. As the market becomes increasingly saturated with product, digital camera sales are predicted to peak at 111 million by 2009.  Nevertheless, there seems to be no turning back. More than a century earlier, George Eastman, Kodak’s founder, dreamed of making photography an “everyday affair.”   Consider Eastman’s surprise at how much photography has changed since the day he hit the street promoting his Kodak One to the public.

The introduction of the digital camera has changed how people act in front of and behind the lens. The act of reviewing the picture immediately after capture, similar to the affect Edwin Land’s Polaroid, alters the interpersonal dynamic between subject and photographer significantly.

The time of Eastman’s “everyday affair” has come in an age of instant everything.  Digital photography is making how people communicate cheaper, faster and easier than ever.

The immediacy of digital photography has several advantages over older technologies beyond speed and cost.  The digital photography allows people to be more productive, feel more creatively empowered, and to develop greater levels of social interaction than previously experienced with older technologies. 

Digital photography has a democratizing impact in that ultimately increases social and empathic interactions, greater productivity, and creative empowerment. At the same time, the seamless and malleable nature of the digital format raises, once again, concerns about the authenticity and veracity of the image.   

From a social psychological perspective, thanks to digital technologies, human visual behavior in the age of instant becomes a fascinating and ever changing challenge.

Increasingly, for many of us, the world in which we live has been defined not only through our direct experience with it, but also through the pictures we carry in our heads about it. Advertising images, television, still pictures, and now just about everything about Internet, provide us with a relentless stream of mediated visual messages.

Young people now experience the world radically different from their ancestors. Growing up in the age of instant means that people learn about themselves predominantly through the likenesses and representations created by others.

The images we see in print or on a screen map a world view, construct and define desires and fears, create self and group identity, promote societal likes and dislikes, and promulgate a collective memory.

On the day we dropped our toddler off at daycare for the first time we included a tiny book of family photographs. Feeling guilty that day for having to leave our child with strangers, we believed that the pictures would be a consoling influence for her throughout the day.

In grocery store we avoid the cereal aisle knowing well that the brightest, most colorful, and most seductive boxes of cereal, designed to attract the attention of little ones, are always placed on the lowest shelves for easy viewing. Pictures, as a form of persuasive communication, inform, shock, terrify, tease, inspire, entertain, teach, seduce, and console us emotionally and intellectually.

“We thus live in an era in which it is difficult to conceive of even a single human activity that does not use photography, or at least provide an opportunity for it to be deployed in the past, present or future.”
Ariella Azoulay, (2005). The Ethic of the Spectator: The Citizenry of Photography. After Image: 33

What is unique about the photograph is the almost instant capacity to substantiate our experiences, and by extension, our very existence in time and place. The only problem now is that in a world already saturated with images, we continue to produce more and more of them.  If cultures are shaped through ritual and routine, then, images play a significant role in process as an on-going  medium of recollection. 

Picturing the human costs of war

Source: AFP/Jim Watson

Since 2003, the War of Terror in Iraq has injured more than 16,500 U.S. soldiers, yet, until recently, little attention has been given to the issue.   

How could such an important story get so buried by the mainstream media? Why does it take a scandal, such as the one the Washington Post reported on recently about conditions Walter Reed Army Medical Center to break through to the public?

Let's face it, pictures of a soldier having a leg amputated  aren't as interesting as those showing the car bomb du jour in Baghdad. Pictures of a Marine learning how to walk again cannot compete with the seemingly endless stream of press conferences announcing the latest strategy for winning the war in Iraq.  More than anything else, however, is the fact that pictures showing the consequences of the conflict gets personal. Every soldier has a story to tell that is unique and very personal. Ultimately, the stories soldiers have to tell reveal the disturbing and honest reality about the conflicts we find ourselves engaged in overseas.   

To tell these stories accurately and honestly news organizations would have had to commit more resources than they normally would on what is typically considered human interest. However, there are exceptions such as Todd Heisler's  Pulitzer Prize winning photo essay on a family's struggle to cope with the death of 2nd Lt. James Cathey or the essay by James Natchwey on soldiers recovering from injuries featured in Time magazine.

Part of the problem may be how news is categorized by news organization into what is perceived as either "hard" or "soft."  The dichotomy  between classifying news as  more salient or relevant in terms of content becomes especially problematic in the case of the injured soldiers story.

Showing how the lives of thousands of injured Americans are dramatically changed by war challenges our preconceptions of what news is.

In other words,  it appears that the mainstream media doesn't get behind a story like this one until there is critical mass. This gets back to the criticism that the media may not tell us what to think, but they do tell us what to think about.

How the injured soldiers story has been typically framed for us as a human interest story rather than as a "hard" news issue, until now, suggests a form of agenda setting. For example, look how long it took for Americans to see images of the flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. Clearly, there is are ideological interests involved in keeping Americans in denial about the very real costs of war. Pictures of injured soldiers  does little to promote a war-time mentality, because they speak truth to power as well as challenge the logic and intelligence of our foreign policy makers.

There is a dramatic  difference between what is perceived as "front" and "back"   stage news stories. In society today, it is easy to miss all of the backstage stories associated with the conflict in Iraq since so much press attention seems to focus how a political administration reacts to specific developments and events from day to day.  In many ways, evaluating how the media uses images from Iraq is like watching a football game on television. 

In summary, what we too often see in visual reportage today is the "effect" without understanding the "cause." 

 

 

 

Digital culture reveals seedier side of visual behavior

News about how photography is becoming increasingly diverse in our digital universe in all over the Internet these days. Stories about how our visual culture may be changing how people act in front of and behind the lens of a camera. However, human nature and needs based on fears and desires, remain the same. 

People remain obsessed with making and sharing images with each other, but now there is the Internet and digital technologies to make it all that much easier.

This week alone, on the seedier side of life, there are stories about how Scottish troops made mobile phone pictures of each other allegedly taking drugs while on duty, nude photos of actress Jennifer Aniston appearing on the web before the release of her latest movie, a teen prosecuted for taking naughty photos of herself and her teenage beau and e-mailing, the arrest of an Australian man for taking dozen of digital photos up women's skirts, a host of embarrassing and personal photos of a young woman in a dressing room mysteriously appearing online after being dropped off for processing at Wal-Mart.

We hear a lot about how digital photography is helping people become more productive and creative in recording their daily lives, but what we don’t often understand is how the darker side of human behavior is also coming out.  We know that citizen journalism is now joining forces with mainstream media, camera phones are being banned from public places, and new laws are prohibiting pictures such as those from Ana Nicole Smith’s autopsy from ever being published.   

Are digital cameras enabling deviant behavior more now than in the past with film cameras?

Is this the future of journalism?: Associated Press to collaborate with citizen journalism Website

 

On Friday, the Associated Press announced it will be working with PublicNow.com to expand access to news as it happens. PublicNow has a membership base of more than 60,000 citizen journalists in 140 countries, while the AP remains the world's largest news gathering operation with more than 4,000 employees.

Potentially the partnership could revolutionize mass media by doing away with the boundaries between amateur and professional content production. It will be interesting to see how PublicNow contributors understand and comply with the conventions, standards, and ethics of mainstream journalistic practice.

According to Managing Editor for Multimedia Lou Ferrera:

"In the early stages of the relationship, AP bureaus will work with NowPublic communities in selected locations on ways to enhance regional news coverage. National AP news desks also may tap the network in breaking news situations where citizen contributors may capture critical information and images. NowPublic also will help AP extend its coverage of virtual communities, such as social networks and contributed content sites."

The collaboration, however, seems to signify a trend in the industry to capture competition for content in an already content-saturated media environment. A few months ago, Yahoo and Reuters joined forces by inviting citizen shutterbugs to submit images of breaking news events.

Although the merger of professional and citizen-sourced content is inevitable in an age of instant communication, the road ahead may be a bit bumpy for an industry already struggling to maintain credibility and public trust.

As images and events continue to flood into the newsrooms of AP, Reuters, and other organization from citizen-sources, what is to prevent public relations firms and the government from trying to make propaganda appear more legitimate. If I worked for a company that wanted to get on the news wires to sell a product or brand a name, I would be thinking really hard right now how to take advantage of the collaborative trends.

Already, news seems so saturated with an array of pseudo-events that stretch the definition of what constitutes relevant and significant information. 

Ultimately, wire services and Websites will be challenged to ensure that citizen-sourced media is legitimate and credible. At the same time,  maybe the prevailing public perception of mass media as a trustworthy source of information is so low, that it won't really make much of a difference. 

Michael Tippett founder of PublicNow.com write in a recent post about the Anna Nicole Smith notes that many people are becoming concerned that the news is increasingly sensationalist and celebrity driven.

What really struck home was Tippett's comment on how news has changed in recent years.

"Where news goes wrong is when it goes from being the messenger to being the message. Where people get bored is when news produces celebrity instead of reporting on it."