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.
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.
Play by play: The social function of news images
Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Pictures have weight -- sometimes they crush. The social function of news images reside not only
in their capacity to inform, but also in their ability to entertain. In our increasingly visual culture, pictures must draw and hold the viewer's attention. Perhaps it is for this reason that editors believe pictures must be packaged and repackaged for us.
The social function of news images is grounded in the rhetoric of persuasion. Just as a lawyer may seek to sway a jury to his or her side of an argument, a picture, through its variety of visual cues, establishes a context of understanding that shapes perception and constructs a sense of reality.
The analysis:
"Mr. Clemens" -- the subject -- the sign -- in soft-focus foregrounding leads the eye upward to a carefully framed center of Mr. Clemens.
Pictures, as David Fleming (1996) eloquently contends, cannot be in and of themselves seen as arguments, but inevitably they seem to be able to cause a few.
The pictures freezes, frames and fixes in our memory a moment in time that can conjure up other memories. With the stoppage of time the persuasive determinacy of the picture emerges. Pictures may be a species of rhetoric, as Susan Sontag (2003) claims, for the very real sense that they appear before us as rational and orderly entities of time.
In this case, Clemens' testimony before Congress on steroid use may bring to mind other high-profile hearings such as in Iran-Contra with Oliver North or Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas' appointment to the Supreme Court. The low camera angle is iconic in that it produces a recognizable perception in which the subject is made to appear larger-than-life.
The camera angle is not trivial or a trick since it modifies our sense of a normal eye-line match. In other words, speaking in terms of grammar, the camera angle acts like an adverb -- it modifies the subject. Further, the sign, in this case, "Mr. Clemens," is indexical and points toward formality, courtesy and solemnity. The gesture is wholly symbolic. Clemens' look away from those questioning him, his raised hand suggesting defense. In addition, the essential framing of Clemens with his pseudo-archangelic lawyers. The gestures of Clemens' lawyers speak louder than words. Here we have the million-dollar pitcher in the proverbial "hot seat" and is million-dollar lawyers act as his intellectual bodyguards.
As mentioned earlier, news images function to both inform and entertain, but the real objective of making pictures is to make us think. Any object in the world, and pictures are objects, that can make us think about bigger ideas and issues can't be all that bad. We shouldn't have to settle for someone else's interpretation of the world if what is represented only serves to reinforce a status quo. The ultimate objective of a news image should not only be to serve us a preconceived packaged reality, but to wrestle with convention and conscience.
The evidence:
Recently, this point was brought home on the Magnum photo site when Christopher Anderson's bare-bulb approach to photographing presidential candidate Mitt Romney came under fire from some viewers. Anderson's approach was the "anti-photo op." Tired of making the same stale and banal images that most of the press pack gets of the candidates, Anderson blasted Romney through what appears to be a rain-splattered lens. 
Click to go to Magnum's Picture of the Week
In his defense Anderson commented:
These events are rather ridiculous. they are staged and repetitive....It was a conscious decision to flash with this technique. It is as if throwing too much light on it might somehow expose these campaign photo ops for what the really are. The designers of these events want us to make a pretty picture. but a pretty picture to me felt like something that would be false to this event. I almost thought of the flash as being like an xray that would reveal what I really see at an event like this.
Anderson brings up one of the biggest challenges faces photojournalism today -- mediocrity. If news images do not seek to edify they run risk of becoming nothing more than someone else's spin. What we are tasked with here is to understand the relationship between the art of making news pictures and the larger implications of how these pictures function in society.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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."
Why images of the president fail us today
President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to tape sent by Captain
Charles Robb from Vietnam, 07/31/1968.
LBJ Library photo by Jack Kightlinger.
President Bush gestures from behind the podium as he makes remarks on the economy during an address at Federal Hall in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
The images featured here are strikingly different representations of our nation's commander-in-chief at war. In the former, we see a president caught in an intensely private and intimate moment.
We enter President Johnson's world as a human being reacting honestly to a real situation. We are allowed, even if we disagree with his decisions about the war in Viet Nam to get a glimpse of how heavily all this weighed upon him in some sense. We, in essence, get to empathize with him. There he is, bent over, listening intently to the words of a soldier. The image is moving and touches us with concern.
How often can we say that we have seen similar moments from our current president? How often do pictures of President Bush allow us to empathize with him as a human being? To my knowledge, never. The president is portrayed as the hero, the closer, the bare knuckles guy who has a ranch in Texas. Is this really who Bush is?
It is not that President Bush lacks emotions or feelings, it is just that his public persona is kept, well public. Rarely, are we entitled to view any sign of the president acting human and expressing emotion.
In a recent image of President Bush, made by AP staffer Gerald Herbert, I suggest that restrictions on media access as well as real opportunities to show the president's true persona, rather than his public one, has made the photojournalist's job largely one of complacency and compliance.
Under Bush's years in the Oval Office, photo-ops seem to have blended into another. There is really nothing particularly interesting or significant about most of the images made of the president in the past years, other than to say that the photographer was on the scene. Today, the presidency is all about maintaining an image status quo, "Cover Your Butt" mentality the media has been forced into accepting from an image-sensitive administration.
In this case, Herbert's image, is an attempt to make something out of nothing. The image is also exactly what Eugene Richards was critical of when he spoke about how contemporary photojournalism has been shifting toward producing metaphorical imagery, instead of just visually reporting the event.
In other words, photojournalists are spending more time covering what the stage managers want us to see, and they are doing it splendidly.
Getting personal, unfortunately, is not in the public relations style manual, so it is very unlikely that we will see anything but what the president and his handlers want us to see. Of course, none of this is new.
All presidential photo-ops constitute preconceived events that Daniel Boorstein describes as pseudo-events.
What is the metaphor of the gesture behind the podium? Can a talking head be replaced by a gesturing hand? Apparently, that seems to be one of Herbert's interpretations on the situation. In the circus like ambience of a carefully staged-managed world metaphors abound.
In fact, most presidential public appearances are designed and choerographed for maximum visual impact. In a hyper-media visual saturated world, what people long for is a sense that those in power care about them. Most of the pictures we view on a daily basis of the world's most powerful individual does very little to reassure us of their humanity.
Instead, the representations of our current leader mostly project hubris and supremacy. Seldom are we gifted the opportunity to see the president as vulnernable, indecisive, humble, or even human. But hey, don't blame photojournalists for constructing this altered-reality -- they're just doing their jobs.
Tortured realities: The camera phone comes of age
The potential of the camera phone image to speak truth to power cannot be underestimated. As James Fallows observes, "History is driven by ideas and passions, and by unforeseeable events....History is also driven by science and technology."
When technology slams headlong into inhumane and unjustice acts, people begin to take notice. Today, we are on the verge of a digital revolution with the emergence of cell phone technologies -- one that can be seen as a positive force used to promote democracy or one that may eventually be used to destroy it.
Pictures from Abu Ghraib of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners,the tsunami disaster, the subway bombings in London, the execution of Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, and more recently the photographs of Egyptian police torturing suspects suggests the emergence of a hyper-mediated surveillance society.
The motivation to photograph atrocities by the perpetrators, such as in Abu Ghraib prison, Haditha, and in Egypt indicates how people in positions of power and control blindly operate by a code of conduct that is beyond any law -- human or devine. The soldiers and police making these images possess a sense superiority and impunity toward those they deem to be the enemy. The pictures they make may be made as evidence, entertain, or propaganda.
When 21-year-old Egytian minibus driver Imad Kabir was hung upside down and sodomized, his torturers recorded the proceedings with a camera phone and then transmitted the video to the Kabir's co- workers as a warning. The pictures eventually made their way onto the Internet and two police offers were jailed in the incident.
Originally conceived as an act of oppression against those opposing the government's authority, the Egyptian camera phone images reveal the often rumored and insidious truth about the mistreatment of prisoners. It is extremely difficult for any government to deny such cases of abuse when the evidence appears so indisputable.
The camera phone images we have seen in recent years are glimpses of a world we have heard about but have seldom seen. Images of atrocity and abuse, revealing the darkest side of humanity, speak truth to power as history unfolds before our eyes.
Agenda setting pictures
Photo Credit: AFP/Mandel Ngan
A recent file photo of President Bush and Vice President Cheney released by AFP shows how picture selection may contribute to how media agendas influence public policy and perception. The caption for the picture indicates nearly no relationship to the actual story.
The caption reads:
File picture of Vice President Dick Cheney (R) and US President George W. Bush at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Bush and Cheney issued new warnings to Iran, saying it must keep out of Iraq, but Iraq's foreign minister instead called for the release of five Iranians in US custody in his country.
Perhaps in better times, when the president's popularity was a little stronger than it is today, the picture choice may have been difference. However, with the president in the hot seat over his policy in Iraq, there appears little motivation on the part of the media to make him look good. Instead, what we will most likely see from here on in are pictures that show the president in comprising situations -- pictures of disfavor.
This brings us to the idea of agenda setting pictures, referring to the McCombs and Shaw theory that mass media may not tell us what to think, but it is pretty good at telling us what to think about.
Photo Credit: AFP/Tim Sloan
Here's another photo that suggests the picture editing mood swing that is happening these days in terms of the president's popularity or lack thereof. In this image, shortly after the Democrats cleaned house in the mid-term elections, the president and vice president are seen in retreat at the White House.
Photo Credit: APTV via AP
Finally, this video frame grab shows a somewhat less than defiant President Bush as he addresses the country about his strategy on Iraq last week.
If you are looking for a more decisively political take on this type of topic check out BagNewsNotes.
At the same time, this lay analysis may be nothing short of hooey. In the big picture of things, thousands of images of the president move across the wire weekly, and it would be silly to think that there is some sort of grand conspiracy to take visual cheap shots at the man.
What is most noticeable, however, is the apparent increase in less than flattering images of the president in recent weeks, especially since his troop surge plan has been met with distain in congress and elsewhere.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
A sign for the times
Photo Credit: AP/WTMJ-AM
It shouldn't come as a great surprise that the upcoming midterm election is generating some interesting responses from critics on all sides of the political spectrum. Some U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq entered the limelight today as they took a swipe at John Kerry's recent criticism of the Bush Administration's policy on the war.
From one perspective, this banner not only represents a form of free expression it is also a political attack advertisement that is sure to be picked up by Republicans as they seek to find further means to discredit Democrats.
It's curious that both military commanders and the media view the soldiers' message as more humor and less about politics. However, if people read behind the joke, the implications are far more serious.
It would be interesting to see how military command as well as the media would react if the soldiers were criticizing George Bush in this way instead of John Kerry. No joke.
Pictures are about persuasion as much as they are about information
Consistently, newspaper frontpages, television news, and web sites select images that communicate to audiences a specific moment in time. These pictures tell stories, of course, but they are also selected and displayed to convince and persuade us to think, feel, and act in certain ways. This is sort of editing process and the design decisions that follow are all part of a rhetorical schema. Anchors by words, the pictures have persuasive determinancy that seek to push to attract, engage, and maintain interest in the story.
The last few weeks have proved to be quite troubling for many observers of the media, especially the field of photojournalism.
The level of public scrutiny now given to images by the general public, especially on the Internet, is unprecedented. Political interests on all sides of the Middle East conflict are holding the social conscious of this nation hostage. Increasingly, audiences are called upon to become more visually literate when interpreting news images. News photography, which at one time maintained at least the perception of validity and truthfulness, is being undermined by a growing throng of disbelievers.
During the first two weeks of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, media coverage has become suspect as cases of photo-digital manipulation, events staged for the camera, and captioning errors come more fully to light. One blog, Zombietime, encourages readers to consider the importance of understand how images can be manipulated. The site offers tips on identifying four kinds of photographic fraud and lists the Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times as perpetrators.
Zombietime’s analysis of news photography concludes four types of common manipulations:
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
The speed and immediacy of the Internet enables critics, on the left and the right of center, to identity, denounce, and defend news imagery that would otherwise go unnoticed by the masses. News organizations are responding to catch and punish any transgressors that undermine the integrity of the Fourth Estate, but they may be too late.
Dozens of conservative bloggers including, Michelle Malkin, Times Watch, and Little Green Footballs have been relentlessly scouring the Internet to find examples of media manipulation.
A recent analysis of how the media was manipulated after the Israeli bombing of Qana Lebanon illustrates this point brilliantly. In a short video the German news magazine Zapp shows how one rescuer, referred to as the Green Helmet, directs coverage of the events for the international press. Did Hezbollah choreograph the aftermath of the bombing to solicit outrage and sympathy in the Arab world? Many people believe that wide-scale manipulation of the press corps was and continues to be a reality.
Here is a link to a short survey on Photo-Digital Manipulation
The big question now is what happens to our historic collective memory if the images we view are continually the subject of disbelief? Will we become a nation of hate-mongering cynics?
For Hardt (1999), “Photographs, like all cultural products, have conditions and contexts that are based on historically determined cultural conventions, forms, beliefs, and perceptions.”
Despite the current uproar concerning the veracity of photojournalistic practices, there is still the question of how these images, manipulated or not, impact foreign policy decision. Is there anyway to truly calculate the impact pictures have on public perception? Was Israel's cease-fire after the bombing of Qana a sign that the government was reacting to outside pressure after millions of people around the world were subjected to pictures of the dead, especially children?
Following how the media covers an issue like the present conflict in the Middle East is a little like watching a tennis match. One side hits the ball and the audience turns its collective head toward where the ball might land. Then, there is the return, and the audience is driven back. This is the way news images are presented to us. One series of pictures showing the news of the day, all of them fairly similar in content.
Washington Post writer Peter Baker (2006) observes, “With each new scene of carnage in southern Lebanon, outrage in the Arab world and Europe has intensified against Israel and its prime sponsor, raising the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials.”
This summer our Violence and Visual Culture class at Southern Oregon University tracked the first two weeks of the conflict in four newspapers. Students counted the number, size, placement, source, and characteristics of the content from July 14 through July 31 in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian, and the Medford Mail Tribune.
Some of the questions we were trying to answer included:
Are there significantly more images showing dead and dying Lebanese civilians than Israeli civilians? If so, why? If there are more pictures of dead Lebanese than Israeli would world outcry change policy?
The content analysis conducted by the class examines only the beginning of the conflict -- a period of time when most the pictorial representations of the destruction in Lebanon and Israel occurred.
A total of 186 images in all four papers, with the lion's share (n=105) depicted in The New York Times.
Sixty-nine images depicted Lebanese civilians, while only 26 showed Israel civilians. In another area, 40 pictures showed Israel soldiers, while two images of Hezbollah fighters and 2 of Lebanese soldiers were used.
Can any conclusions be drawn from looking at images that play on the emotions of viewers?
Here are some data (early and unscrubbed) from the analysis. It would be interesting to have an online conversation about the possible implications of the role of images on public perception and foreign policy.
Cloning Lebanon in Context
Here is the photo that has led to a storm of controversy in mass media world, especially in the blogosphere.
According to the BBC, "The news agency Reuters has withdrawn from sale 920 pictures taken by a photographer [adnan hajj],after finding he had doctored two images taken in Lebanon."
Click here to take a survey on photo manipulation.
Despite the reaction and response to the recent manipulation of a Reuters image, many people are missing an important issue.
Over the past few decades the MSM has come to depend on outsourcing many of its most dangerous reporting assignments to in-country freelancers -- people who take far more risks, are paid less, far less educated, and far more likely to be treated like disposable commodities than their Western colleagues.
The big picture issue here is more about the political-economics of doing business in times of war, than it is about one person's journalistic integrity. Let's get this straight.
One of the most important issues facing the media today is credibility, yet Western wire services continue to utilize labor practices that exploit people.
Shouldn't wire services and the editors who work for them be held as equally accountable to the public as the photographer?
What needs to be discussed here is the reality that our wire services exploit freelancers who end up assuming all the risk of working in extremely dangerous situations. Consider for a moment the number of Iraqi journalists, many of them working for Western news agencies, that have died in the past four years. In-country photojournalists, be it in Iraq or Lebanon, risk their lives every day so that we can be better informed.
The reality of the situation is that these freelancers are typically paid far less than Western photojournalists, become targets of political reprisals, and are rarely covered by any sort of health insurance policy.
In this case, even if the freelancer is fired and all his or her pictures removed from circulation, the wire services will inevitably hire another freelancer with the same language, cultural, and technological skills to take his place.
Firing the freelancer is a knee-jerk, sort of "cover our butts", reaction to a even more insidious situation that has been overlooked in the industry for decades. Outsourcing what is the equivalent of photo-mercenaries in order to save money and Western lives.
Freelancers need the same training, pay, educational opportunities, and health coverage as any other human being needs in this sort of situation. However, all of this costs money, and the bottom line in the news business these days is pretty much do news fast and do news cheap.
The message that Reuters is sending to the public by firing the freelancer is that they can be counted on to take care of individuals who make them look bad. I feel a deep sense of sadness for the freelancer who probably didn't even know that he was doing anything wrong in the first place.
What needs to the discussed here is the bigger and meatier issue of how the wire services out source the most dangerous and difficult assignment to freelancers who are more or less treated like a disposable commodity.
Even though Reuters publicly apologized for the picture that got out, where were editors who cleared the image for distribution? In this case, a first-grader could have done a better cloning job on the image, and at the end of the day it is the editors, not just the photographer, that have failed us. What we need now is an honest discussion about the use of in-country hires and freelancers by media giant who exploit them in order to feed the beast that our insatiable appetite for images in this country has become.
We should not, in this case, be shooting the messenger (the freelancer), but rather the companies that fail to educate their content providers in understanding the importance of balanced, fair-minded, and ethical visual practices.
The Optics of This War
Yesterday, the radio program Open Source with Christopher Lydon, jumped into an issue that I have been writing about over the past week -- images and the politics of images as they impinge on public consciousness as well as foreign policy.
Here are some of the questions Lydon poses to his guests , Marc Lynch, Annia Ciezadlo, and James Der Derian about the current Israeli-Lebanese war:
1. How important are the optics of this war, and who’s managing them better?
2. What links can we draw from the outcome of the actual fighting to media coverage, public opinion and ultimately diplomacy?
3. Is Hezbollah’s goal in this conflict territory and a prisoner exchange, or is it sympathy and support, the kind that rushes in from the wider Muslim world as the images from Qana begin to spread?
4. Children are dying in apartment blocks in Haifa, too; how does Israel win the diplomatic game when it’s fighting to a draw on the ground and losing the war of images?
Each question requires detailed analysis, but what I would like to point out here is the notion of visual determinancy and the limitations of photography to convey the moral complexities of conflict.
Fortunately, an expanding body of literature in the field of images of war may help to more insightfully explicate the issues at hand.
The importance of the optics of this war, or any modern conflict, is increasingly obvious to many observers as well as foreign policy makers. David Perlmutter, in his book Photojournalism and Foreign Policy, addresses this issue extensively. For Perlmutter, “Sometimes a general ‘CNN effect’ subsuming the flood of imagery and its instantaneousness and vividness is ascribed as being able to influence, affect, or drive foreign policy” (5).
Certainly images from Vietnam, such as the street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner or the naked child fleeing her burning village after a Napalm air strike, contributed to U.S. foreign policy decision following a buildup of public outcry against the war. In addition, China was force to reconsider how it was dealing with the democracy movement at Tiananmen in 1989 following the release of a protestor standing in front of a line of tanks. Further, in1994, pictures showing dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by an angry mob became visual determinants in how that conflict was being managed.
The optics of war is driven by the images immediacy, intensity, and intimacy. Anchored by the saliency of headlines, images of war take on an ideological dimension that is often perceived as more forceful than written accounts.
According to Perlmutter:
News photographs are remarkably selective windows on the world. The myriad other vista of reality and events that occur beyond the range of the lens, the eye of the photographer, or the scope of the newscast or newspaper, are ignored.
Not only are images selective windows on the world, they comprise an ideological constellation of meaning that contribute to how we think, feel, and act. Pictures, as representative anecdotes of an event, may help to sum up an event but they may not move us beyond looking.
One explanation in terms of who is managing the optics or war better – Israel or Hezbollah – must explore the emotional and intellectual appeal of the content. Pictures of Israeli artillery firing off salvos against an unseen enemy do not have the same emotional and intellectual appeal as images of dead Lebanese children.
As Sontag contends, "Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. And photographs are a species of alchemy, for all that they are prized as a transparent account of reality" (Regarding the Pain of Others, page 81).
The frequency and immediacy of pictures of dead children elicit sympathy as well as outrage from viewers in ways that pictures of Israeli troop movements, artillery, or the distant shots buring buildings in Beirut cannot.
In this case, the repetition and numbers of images depicting the human cost of Israeli air strikes and bombardment allows for Hezbollah to take control in what is becoming a war of images as it is a war of fighting armies.
From an academic perspective, claiming that Hezbollah is winning a propaganda war based on anecdotal evidence is unsatisfactory. What needs to be examined here is a direct relationship or correlation between public opinion and the number, placement, and frequency of such images?
Photography, as a subtractive medium, can restrict our understanding what is happening by constraining our view of reality. When we are bombarded by pictures of dead Lebanese children our visual activity becomes concentrated by the emotional impact of an event framed by the photographer.
At the same time, news organizations visually respond predictably to the stories they put on their front pages. For example, most of Today's Front Page show an overwhelming number of newspapers using cliche hot weather pictures -- mostly people throwing water over their heads. In the history of modern newspaper design images reflect the spotlighting or highlighting of one series of events over another. In this instance, the picture may not be the same, but repeatedly the message is.
The majority of these pictures are showing us little other than something we already know, but nevertheless, editors feel obligated to visually represent the moment that otherwise could be said in one word -- HOT. The pictures, in this case, apologize for a lack of news beyond what most people are already experiencing.
Getting back to the problem of analyzing images from the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, I think it is important to remind ourselves of what Sontag observes:
"Central to modern expectations, and modern ethical feeling, is the conviction that war is an aberration, if an unstoppable one. That peace is the norm, if an unattainable one. This, of course, in not the way war has been regarder throughout history. War has been the norm and peace the exception" (74).
Considering this perspective, the visual determinancy of the frame contributes in many ways to this expectation -- that peace is the norm, or at least it is something that "ought" to be.
Looking again at the questions:
What links can we draw from the outcome of the actual fighting to media coverage, public opinion and ultimately diplomacy?
To be honest, without actually physically counting the number of images used, and without considering the content, placement, size, caption, and headline, we can conclude very little. All we are left with is an impression or the sense that there is a link between what the images show us and the public's reaction to them. Our interpretation of an image is fallible, just like any experience -- direct or indirect [thank you Charles for the clarification].
Since this conflict continues to escalate, it become imperative to suspend our inclination to rush to some conclusion in terms of impacting foreign policy. At the same time, clearly Israeli 48-hour cease-fire could be linked to the flood of gore and destruction after killing 56 people in Lebanon.
International condemnation of the attack in this case has given the Israeli government pause in rethinking how it manages its message in the foreign press. This can be seen already by examining the number of stories turning the violence back on Hezbollah's alledged use of civilians as human shield. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any pictures of guerrillas holding civilians gunpoint while they position their rockets against Israeli targets. All we get in the media is fingerpointing on both sides.
At issue is whether we can accept the commonsense viewpoint offer to us from one side or another. Ultimately, without having any visual evidence that this is the case we are left with only words to decide what is right and truthful.
Questioning the "commonsense" of news photographs
In a one-two punch of emotion and despair, the insane and unjust reality of war hit home in yesterday's New York Times. Look carefully at the juxtaposing forces of signification on display in the full-page reproduction, left, and then move in for a closer study of the signified on the right.
How is it possible to fully understand the power of images? How can one poignant moment compare to another?
In our class Sex, Violence and Visual Culture this summer at Southern Oregon University we have started analyzing images from a social semiotic perspective. Social semiotics can be a useful in evaluating the meanings by questioning "commonsense" views of the world. By understanding what we see, as Jack Solomon observes, commonsense views of the world become "habitual opinions and perspectives of the tribe."
Using this approach, we examine the social and cultural constructions of reality that are presented to us as "commonsense" news. In his book "Signs of the Times," Solomon reminds us that cultures conceal ideologies as something made to appear natural.
Although tempted to understand the potential of seeing as limitless we are still very much constrained by the accumulation of social and cultural taboos, myths, filters, and semiotic codes.
Signs are codes imbued with meaning that help us function in the world. For example, traffic lights are sign systems that convey meaning through colors to organize the chaos of driving down a street – green (go), yellow (warning), red (stop).
Words are signs within a system of language. One person may call Iraqi insurgents “freedom fighters”, while others label them “terrorists”. Meanings become embedded in our cultural and collective memory through repetition and recall.
There is much to explore in the juxtaposition of the two images on the front of The New York Times in terms of how reality is filtered, screened, and coded for us. The Israeli soldiers grieving for a fallen comrade in the picture above symbolizes more than the death of a combatant. The picture signifies a turning point in the conflict that is supported by headlines and text. We perceive the violence that this image re-presents for us as a cultural barometer – something Solomon contends marks, “the dynamic moment of social history.”
The violence of the conflict becomes filtered through a lens of what "naturally" follows conflict -- death and destruction. Prehaps the commonsense view I am resisting here is that the picture pleads with me to accept the consequences of a war that will not be resolved by the rhetoric of peace accords and cease-fires.
This point of view becomes even more important as my eyes move downward to see a Palestinian man buried a baby. We can see her tiny face framed by the traditional burial shroud. We can see the face of the man lowering the body to rest. The man is wearing a T-shirt with the words (another sign) selling T-Mobile… and we stop to pause for a second. We reflect on the meanings of these images – the dead baby and the man in the T-Mobile shirt.
Now, this is only one possible reading out of many, and this is the point of what happens in the signifying process. What we need to remember is that the meaning of an object does not reside in the object itself but in the interactions and discourse surrounding it. Many people may make little of the connection between how the child died and the man with the T-Mobile shirt. At the same time, others see the coincidence as a strange juxtaposition of contrasting ideas.
How do we learn to teach ourselves to question the “commonsense” view of what we are presented with as news?
The picture presents me with a puzzle of conflicting signifiers -- The dead baby and the T-shirt promoting high technology. I must work to decode the separate meanings and then somehow pull them together to construct a deeper understanding of the unsettling realities. I must work, therefore, to decode the "commonsense" and naturalize view of a world that becomes filtered through a system of signs legitimized as news.
"Globalization is often celebrated as an advance of human freedom in which individuals are ever freer to lead fives of their own choosing. Transnational flows of money, goods, and ideas, it is argued, will accompany an increasingly liberal international order in which individuals can participate in a global economy and culture."
David Singh Grewal, Network Power and Globalization, Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 17, 2003.
Dyadic relationships such as signifier and signified produce meaning as a sign.
Signifer = object
Signified = meaning
---------------------
Together, the signifier and the signified produce a sign.
baby in death shroud = signified
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dead baby killed by Israeli forces = signified
Taken together I interpret the meaning of what I see as
Civilian casualities as a sign of conflict.
At the same time, another layer of signification is added to the process as we evaluate the meaning of the man's T-shirt within the context of the conflict.
Visual hegemony and The New York Times front page
When it comes to understanding how people consume pictures either as news, information, or entertainment we need to think in terms of how social reality is constructed for us by the gatekeepers and agenda setters of the world.
How do we know what something is supposed to represent or mean without some sort of reference to relate it to?
For those fortunate to have the gift of sight, much of our informational system is based on the repetition and recall of images.
In reviewing the front page display of three lead images in The New York Times today there is an interesting example of how social realities are constructed through the use and positioning of images in the news. In this case, viewers are presented with three distinct impressions of the conflict in the Middle East.
However, the signification of the overall message is dependent on how the pictures interact with one another. In another sense, there is a gestalt to the display as each image builds meaning off one another. In other words, the collective meaning of the three pictures subordinates the power of reading the images individually.
The New York Times editors have a hierarchy of importance in mind when they arrange the picture of a Marine escorting evacuees off a beach above and bigger than two smaller supporting images – one showing Hezbollah fighters and the other depicting a corpse.
There is symmetry to the arrangement of visual elements here that provides a sense of authority for the narrative. The arrangement of the pictures -- two below and one above --is a structurally semiotic triad of meaning -- icon, index and symbol.
From a semiotic perspective, the combination of these images tells a story through a relationship of signs -- some more symbolic in nature than others. All three images are iconic, but the two images below rely heavily on the juxtaposition of index against symbolism.
The picture of the fighters on the left acts as an index or something that is pointing to the symbolism of the corpse on the right. In other words, this combination of images is a construction with a very pointed message. In this case, the picture of the fighters signifies death, terror, fear, and insecurity in relation to the adjacent corpse. Meanwhile, the picture of the Marine above signifies security, safety, and escape from the two images below.
No doubt, the editors are carefully constructing a visual narrative for the reader designed to frame the current crisis in a specific way.
There is a visual hegemony to the arrangement of these pictures – one that suggests how viewers are directed to a specific ideology in ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling about events. Antonio Gramsci observed that people are not only subordinated to the will of a dominant group through physical and mental coercion, but also through repeated exposure, cultivation and indoctrination to a set of prevailing values, attitudes, and ideas.
This is what I read through the editor’s selection, scaling, and positioning of images on a page. In some ways, perhaps, my interpretation is a bit too excessive and paranoid. It could be that my reading may be too critical for some in that it suggests that the gatekeepers of information have an agenda and motive for deciding what is news that is not always objective and unbiased.
Then again, for others, thinking about how images construct realities may be well worthwhile considering.
A Tale of Two Pictures: Image Ethics and Abu Ghraib at Year Two
Two years have come and gone since the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq opened our eyes to what may be one of the most critical and defining moments of this conflict.
The graphic scenes of humiliation and torture that began to appear in April 2004 subvert any claims to a moral victory in Iraq by U.S. and coalition forces. More than 275 images and nearly two-dozen videos made by guards at the prison are now part of our national collective memory of the war.
Reduced to grainy snapshots depicting the horror and deprivation of prisoners of war, a simple truth reveals how capable we are of inflicting injustice on humanity.
The reality recorded here, of course, is not new in the history of so-called civilization, but it does provide “hard” evidence of our ability to do great harm in the name of all that is good about our country.
What these images signify for me may upset many people, but I feel compelled to speak my mind.
Naturally, the actions of a few do not represent the majority. Yet, pictures like those from Abu Ghraib send a strong message to the rest of the world -- a picture that paints a very sobering and despicable characterization of America as the so-called leader of the free world.
The Abu Ghraib images represent far more than the brutality depicted.
These pictures contradict the image we hold about ourselves as a fair-minded and good-hearted people. In a sense, we reject what these images tell the rest of the world about us as a people because we do not believe that we could ever commit such heinous acts.
The pictures signify a mockery of everything we are taught to believe in about our nation. For me, the reality of these images destroys any illusion I may have had about America as peaceful, tolerant, and just nation. These pictures shock me into a realization of how callous and inhumane we can be under the pretext of liberation, democracy and freedom. The shame of these images will haunt future generations of Americans and it is a legacy that I am not prepare to ever get comfortable with.
Has anything changed in the time since the release of the first set of prison abuse pictures?
Has justice been served?
A few people are now in jail and forgotten in the eyes of the media. A few people have been demoted in rank and have returned to obscurity.
Through the lens, a central narrative in this conflict has been dutifully recorded for prosperity -- it’s not a pretty picture.
How can we look at these images of tortured prisoners and see human beings?
One reading of these images is that they are not pictures of people at all. These are pictures of things.
Objects.
Once pictured, people are reduced to objects of possession and personal property. Those who dare to understand the implications of such images are singed with grief.
Something insidiously evil is at work in the world today and we’ve got pictures to prove it.
These images – a naked truth revealing how human beings are strapped, bloodied, humiliated, and stripped of dignity – signify a larger tragedy in the cultural pathology of a society saturated with visual messages. We may look at these pictures and remain unmoved. We may see them but still be blinded by apathy and what can only be called the propaganda of mass distraction.
Does the insistent bombardment of visually mediated messages depicting suffering and deprivation reduce our capacity to feel?
Sontag observed, “In a modern life – a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention – it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad.”
Among the pile of images that emerged from the cameras of prison guards at Abu Ghraib, a few have become emblematic of the human rights scandal.
I would like to discuss the power of one of these images as a social artifact of our times. More importantly, I would like to explore how picture editing plays a significant role in the construction of public perceptions of events.
When the New Yorker, and later CBS’ 60 minutes, brought the images to light in April 2004, a picture showing a prisoner standing on a box in a Christ-like pose, captivated the imagination of millions.
Wires had been attached to the hooded man’s hands, and he was told that if he moved he would be electrocuted. In the picture originally released by the mainstream media, there is an aesthetic balance to the frame. The prisoner is centered against a background of yellowed tile.
The hood, poncho, and outstretched arms of the man provide a sense of symmetry. This geometric composition contributes to the viewer’s reading by directing the eye to the dominant subject. The composition is compelling and appeals to our imagination and emotions.
Sarah Boxer of the New York Times contends, “Of all the photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison, one alone [the hooded man] has become the icon of the abuse.”
Boxer’s analysis of the image suggests the power of photography to evoke deep emotions. Boxer writes:
“As a symbolic shape, the hood is almost as strong as a cross. The difference is that the hood has generally been the sign of the persecutor, not of the victim. It is the uniform of the executioner, the sheet of the Klansman, the mask of Death. Until now. In these images, you can see the hood's meaning begin to change and take root.”
Theorist Barry Brummett observes that audiences expect “the world to be mediated to them dramatically…. because the media do so by calling up standard, recurrent, culturally ingrained types of dramas.”
It is not clear to me that the image of the “hooded man” was cropped intentionally to solicit more immediate reaction and pity from viewers. If the picture was cropped it was probably done more out of routine than overt censorship of other seemingly less important elements in the frame.
This is where the tale of the two images comes into conflict, because it is the extraneous elements cropped from the frame that reveal another reality – one that shows the amateurish competence as well as the indifference of the photographers.
Within the past year, a second uncropped version of the “hooded man” image has surfaced.
In this frame, a guard is show to the far right of the image. The prisoner remains centered but the space on either side of him provides a context that is missing from the cropped version.
According to Salon, the Criminal Investigation Command (CID) caption on the picture states that it was “11:04 p.m. on Nov. 4, 2003 and placed in this position by Spc. Sabrina Harman and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II. Both took pictures as a joke. Instructed if moved would be electrocuted. Staff Sgt. Frederick is depicted with a Cyber Shot camera in his hands.”
This caption becomes important when compared to same image released by anti-war groups on the Internet, which suggest that Frederick is clipping his nails.
What are the ethics of cropping an image in a case like the hooded man?
It is important to note that I am assuming the two images come from the same source here. I am only guessing that the first tightly cropped frame is version of the second, more loosely composed image. Nevertheless, my speculation brings up an important issue for students of photojournalism.
Can a crop change the meaning of an image? If so, can the crop be considered to be unethical by contemporary standards and practices?
For Jason Fithian, a senior photojournalism student at San Jose State University, “I totally think cropping out the Sargent changed the whole perception of the image. While it is closely cropped, it gives a sense of isolation, as if nobody is around.
“I think cropping the image does change the integrity of the image and gives the viewer another story. Closely cropping the image can mislead readers and is clearly a violation of ethics.”
Fithian researched some of the National Press Photographers Association and Associated Press guidelines governing photographic manipulation to make a strong case for manipulation.
Fithian suggests that cropping may be considered a form of manipulation since it significantly changes the meaning of the image.
He writes:
Looking at ethical guidelines, NPPA's ethical policies, number six states, "Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects."
One of AP's guidelines state, "Minor adjustments in Photoshop are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, and normal toning and color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction (analogous to the burning and dodging often used in darkroom processing of images) and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph." Again, cropping out the Sargent takes away from the authenticity of the photograph and does not give the audience an accurate portrayal of what is actually occurring.
One could possibly believe wartime censorship is at hand for the elimination of the Sargent While these images are a few years old, it was at a time when there was more support for the war. As more and more people began to find out what is really going on overseas and how the US participates in torture and in violation of UN Human Rights, opinions change.
I believe the public does have a right to know what is going on overseas and to crop out the Sargent in the image is clearly not giving the citizens an accurate portrayal.
Signs of War
According to the The New York Times the image above is a
sign posted at Camp Nama in Iraq where some "detainees were used as paintball targets."
Beyond the political and human rights issues associated with such a message, I find myself haunted by the possible significations found in the relationship between the words and the abstract forms used in the sign.
The phrase "no blood, no foul" is commonly heard on basketball courts. Now there is a new context to consider.Drawing on visual semiotics as a theory for decoding how images convey meaning there are some interesting visual cues at work here. In my mind, there is a strong gestalt between the words and the figures.
There is the simplicity of the visual construction here -- the effective use of negative space and the relative distances of the words sliding up and down the sides of the triangle -- that seem to suggest a high level of formal and declarative order.
According to New York Times writers by Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, the sign is part of a larger message at Task Force 6-26's top-secret detention facility.
"Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: 'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it.'"
What are the iconic, indexical, and symbolic levels of meaning conveyed by such visual messages? Do such messages index or point toward the normalization of attitudes dealing with the treatment of prisoners in Iraq? In other words, does a sign like this foment the abuse of prisoners by establishing and maintaining what appears to me to an increasingly game-like culture of combat associated with military actions?
It is this last question that intrigues me most here. The transference of first person shooter computer games to military action -- in combat and in play seems to be in evidence here. Paintball moves the virtual reality of the computer shooter games into the real world. By extension, there appears to be a connection between fantasy games and warfare.
A simple analysis of the geometry of the dominant figures in the frame -- the circle within a black triangle -- suggest a sort of reciprocity. Maybe I am over-reaching a bit, but reciprocity from a social psychological perspective refers to in-kind negative and positive responses.
According to Wikipedia:
In social psychology, reciprocity refers to in-kind positive or negative responses of individuals towards the actions of others. Thus positively interpreted actions elicit positive responses and vice versa.... Reciprocal actions are important to social psychology as they can help explain the maintenance of social norms. If a sufficient proportion of the population interprets the breaking a social norm by another as a hostile action and if these people are willing to take (potentially costly) action to punish the rule-breaker then this can maintain the norm in the absence of formal sanctions.
In this case, I am visually interpreting the geometric forms of the circle within the black triangular field as constituting a reciprocal relationship -- one establishing and maintaining a social norm endemic in a "barracks culture." A denotative or literal reading may lead a viewer to see the circle as a paintball. However, deeper readings may produce more subtle deeply psychological connotative interpretations.
The Pentagon's Entertainment Recon: Is "America's Army" at War with Bush's Family Values Agenda?
It is no secret that the Bush Administration has carefully aligned itself to the promotion of so-called “family values.” In defending a strong conservative agenda on an array of causes aimed at protecting what it believes to be “traditional” values, the White House has been undeniably vocal.
For many years violent graphic visual media has been at the center of the “family values” war against mass media. Family Values promoters blame video games, movies and music for everything from school shootings to disobedience at home.
In fact, at the start of his first presidential campaign in 2000, Bush pledged to “empower parents to protect their children….from harmful material on the Internet.”
Ironically, two years after Bush came into power, the Pentagon released its brand new weapon in the war to recruit young people into the military called “America’s Army” an online first-person-shooter computer game, that contains – surprise, surprise – violent graphic content.
A screen shot from the game America's Army.
America’s Army, with more than 5.5 million registered users, boasts that players have logged on as many as 94 million hours of online play. Today, the game remains one of the top five online action games in the country.
America’s Army is a FPS or first-person-shooter game. FPS games, like Doom and Quake have been around since the early 1990s. Since then, the games have become the subject of frequent controversy over graphic violence. According to Wikipedia, a “first-person shooter (FPS) is a combat computer or video game, which is characterized by the player’s on-screen view of the game simulating that of the character or First Person view."
In this fantasy world, according to America’s Army propaganda, “We have virtually taken our players through boot camp, through Ranger and Airborne training, and even introduced them to the Army's Quiet Professionals, the elite Special Forces.” Translation: playing at soldiering can be fun – you too can serve, protect, and kill, kill, kill in this virtual universe.
The Pentagon’s strategy to place “Soldiering” at the forefront of popular culture has been a terrific success. Young people are being exposed, at the taxpayers’ expense, to what the Army does – root out evil and destroy it…click…kill…click…kill…click…kill.
Using popular culture as a recruitment tool also puts the Pentagon in the entertainment business and at odds with the “Family Values” concerns expressed by the Bush administration. In short, America’s Army glorifies killing in an effort to attract recruits. With millions of young people playing the FPS game, I guess we can conclude that our current administration’s promise to “protect our children” from the so-called harms of the Internet is nothing short of shallow campaign rhetoric.
At the heart of this issue is whether you believe what the research is saying. Every day, I walk into classrooms full of young people who have played FPS games for years. Should I live my life in fear that exposure to such games as America’s Army or Grand Theft Auto III will turn my students into rabid killers?
There are many studies exploring the affects of violent graphic visual media on teenagers. Most of the studies, not surprisingly, conclude that exposure to such images make boys more aggressive and less academically inclined.
An empirical review of the last 20 years of research on violence and visual media by researchers Jessica Nicoll, B.A., and Kevin M. Kieffer, Ph.D., of Saint Leo University showed that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior in children and adolescents, both in the short- and long-term. According to the report:
“One study showed participants who played a violent game for less than 10 minutes rate themselves with aggressive traits and aggressive actions shortly after playing. In another study of over 600 8th and 9th graders, the children who spent more time playing violent video games were rated by their teachers as more hostile than other children in the study. The children who played more violent video games had more arguments with authority figures and were more likely to be involved in physical altercations with other students. They also performed more poorly on academic tasks.”
However, in his testimony before Congress following the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, suggested that tracing explicit acts of violence to the visual media people consume can be problematic.
“The tangled relationship between these various forms of popular culture makes it impossible for us to determine a single cause for their actions. Culture doesn't work that way.”
Jenkins continued:
“Cultural artifacts are not simple chemical agents like carcinogens that produce predictable results upon those who consume them. They are complex bundles of often contradictory meanings that can yield an enormous range of different responses from the people who consume them.”
What are the cultural implications signified by the symbolic depictions of violence in first-person-shooter games?
It is interesting to note that journalists have not yet made the connection between the government's development of a violent computer game aimed at young people and Bush’s family values agenda.
I have mixed feelings about FPS games but have been on alert as new studies come out.
As a parent of two small children, I do believe that using taxdollars to fund and promote a product that could have negative consequences on society is irresponsible and problematic for a society which prides itself on human rights. At this point, I am afraid to learn how much money has been spent on this so-called “murder simulator” game, but I can imagine that its development and maintenance costs us a pretty penny, financially, psychologically and sociologically.
Another look at presidential photo props and photo ops
AP Photograph
Cartoonist Kirk Anderson has me thinking more about a question raised recently in Philip Kennicott's Washington Post article.
Kennicott asks whether photojournalists become unwitting participants in the political spin process at the hands of public relations specialists and presidential image-makers? Do photojournalists have any choice but to allow themselves to be tightly managed and overtly manipulated by media handlers. I looked at this issue a little last week, but feel compelled to dig a bit deeper.
This picture illustrates how the placement and control of the media in covering presidential events is carefully constructed to produce predictably favorable images for public consumption. At these photo ops, photojournalists do not have free reign to seek out what they consider to be the best possible angle and distance from the subject.
The Associated Press is the original source of this image with bush's head nicely proportioned to the likenesses of former leaders on Mt. Rushmore. One possible reading of the signification going on here leads me to think that George Washington is place so that he looking over George W. Bush's shoulder.
AFP photo
Here is another "infamous" image illustrating the stagecraft that goes on in managing what the media and public visual consumption.
How do you think these types of staging costs US taxpayers? I can only imagine that none of this is cheap, but more research must be done before assumptions become truth.
When Words and Pictures Work Together
In April of last year, Minnesota-based political cartoonist, Kirk Anderson, created the art above in response to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Anderson's commentary on the outsourcing of torture to foreign security agencies was made nearly a year before the CIA extraordinary rendition story hit the news wires recently. Anderson's work is both prescient and insightful.
Yesterday, while listening to NPR, I heard a story about the CIA's secret program. The story was an interview with New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl's coverage of how an al Qaeda suspect fabricated information about Iraq's links to the militant group in order to avoid being tortured by foreign agencies outsourced by the CIA.
According to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, "extraordinary rendition had been devised as a means of extraditing terrorism suspects from one foreign state to another for interrogation and prosecution. Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America—including torture."
Anderson's cartoon is a fusion of image and text that expands the boundaries of traditional cartooning by adding photographic elements. The persuasive determinacy of this cartoon is supported by the evidential nature of the photographic images. Not only do the pictures from Abu Ghraib provide a context for understanding the intention of the text in the cartoon balloons, but the images also ground personal opinion in a form of visual truth -- one that presupposes that pictures don't lie.
The relationship between images and text are interdependent in communicating a cohesive message. The juxtaposition of Anderson's commentary over the images from Abu Ghraib produces a more complex reading than if the drawing and text appeared alone.
The signification or meaning-making that emerges from the multimodal treatment of typography, photography and line drawing in the cartoons relects complimentary relationship that does not seek to subordinate image over text, or, text over image. Instead, the three distinct representational forms combine to form a new "whole text."
If you want to read more about how image-text relations work, see Radan Martinec and Andrew Salway's essay "A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media" appearing in the October 2005 edition of the journal Visual Communication, pages 337 - 371.
You Too Can Become a Presidential Photo Prop
Washington Post Staff Writer Philip Kennicott raises some interesting points when he attempts to understand the power of the presidential photo-op.
In the article Kennicott notes:
"Photographs of the president (any president, since Reagan, at least) are among the most manipulated and crafted images in our society. Are photographers too easily complicit in the crafting of these pictures? Does the natural quest for beauty by photographers make them unwitting propagandists?"
The answers to these question seem so obvious.
Yes and No.
Yes, photographers are too easily manipulated in the hyper-spin world of presidential image making. Photographers are handled by professionals who know how to set up a shot to make their politician look good. It is all about image.
Yes, photographers are susceptible to manipulation by the image-makers, but do they have much of a choice? These sorts of images are less about the photographer's sense of aesthetics and more about how well the presidential image-makers can control the visual outcome of an event. Pictures speak volumes.
If even a president's words fail him, the image coming across the television screen or the photograph on the front page ultimately wins out.
What choice to photographers really have in covering dog and pony shows when all of the elements -- people, location, background, signage, and lighting remain outside of their control?
Kennicott supports this ideas when he writes, "given the ground rules for taking photographs, they [photographers] have little choice. And to intentionally subvert the intended political message is itself an intrusion on straight journalistic truth-telling..."
Often, given the ground rules for taking photographs, they have little choice. And to intentionally subvert the intended political message is itself an intrusion on straight journalistic truth-telling,
If the media complained to the White House that they were feeling manipulated by the way in which presidential photo-ops were being staged they may fear retribution in having their credentials pulled. The media play by the rules of the game, and the presidential image-makers own the rule book. Here's why:
- The presidential image-makers control access to the event and determine who gets in.
- The presidential image-makers tell photographers where to stand to make their pictures.
- The presidential image-makers often herd the media into pens hours before the start of an event for security reasons.
- The presidential image-makers control the angles that photographs can be made from.
- The presidential image-makers control the distance or focal length that photographs are made from.
The visual results of such endeavors for image-makers must be predictable. That's what they are do -- package and sell messages.
For presidential image-makers, the pseudo-event is far more concerned with the science of winning hearts and minds than it is about creating art.
So, are photographers unwitting propagandists? No. Making these sorts of images is a little like delivering the mail. Photographers shoot, for the most part, what people expect them to shoot.
I wrote about the Photo-Prop/Photo-Op effect last year at about this time, when the New York Times deviated from the norm by running a wide angle shot of President Bush at a press conference. Many of the newspapers, however, selected a wire image that showed a close-up of President Bush with the presidential seal framed nicely behind his head like a halo.
I think these two newspaper front pages do a nice job illustrating how lens choice combined with a photographer's intentions can frame the meaning of what is mediated for public visual consumption. All to often, media criticism fails to focus on the relationship between framing and meaning through visual variety, lighting, focal point, and other considerations.
If we are looking for reasons why the public distrusts the media these days perhaps we should step back a bit to consider how the news is socially constructed for us under the pretense of journalistic values such as fairness, balance, accuracy, and objectivity.
BLOGROLL
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Signs and Symbol Resources
- Symbols | The Art of Wonder
- Symbols and Symbolism, Symbolic Images, Meanings, Interpretations - Ready Reference Center at Middletown Thrall Library - Web Research, Websites, Internet Resources
- State Symbols USA | Official State and National Symbols, Emblems, Icons
- Ancient Symbols, meanings of symbols from Ancient Egyptian,Celtic, Greek, etc.
- ANCIENT WISDOM
- Signs, Symbols, Meanings
- Online Symbolism Dictionary
- Geek Lore
- Mircea Eliade
- Merlin Donald
- Sapolsky Metaphors Are Us
- James Howe MIT course Myth, Ritual, and Symbolism
- Peter Russell
- List of Stone Age art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- How Symbols are Created
- Language & Symbols | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
- Symbolism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Enrich Your LIfe with Symbols
- Geometry in Art & Architecture: The Circle Symbol
- The Meaning Of A Pentagram
- The Secret Language of Symbols
- The Circle is a Universal Symbol
- Circles and Symbols
- Cultural Color
- Symbolism of Color: Using Color for Meaning