Sat, April 5, 2003
Photoshop Under Fire
This week the "L.A. Times" fired one of their photographers, Brian Walski, because he submitted an altered photograph and the paper published it on the front page. After it was published, someone noticed that a few people in the background of the photo appeared twice. The "Times" says the altered image represents a breach of journalistic ethics and a violation of "L.A. Times" policy. In my opinion, the policy is not "don't alter the content of news photographs," but rather "don't get caught altering the content of news photographs."
Not that I necessarily condone Walski's actions. If the paper says don't do it, you shouldn't do it. If you look at the two original photos, each is plenty compelling in its own right. Certainly the hybrid image is an improvement in terms of composition and narrative, and certainly Photoshop is frickin' awesome, but it's a big risk to submit an altered image when it's against the rules.
My guess is that Walski was gunning for the front page, and he knew that the statement of the altered image would be hard for his photo editor to pass up. (He was right.)
However, the content of the altered image is not all that different from the content of the originals, either. It's not like he Photoshopped Osama bin Laden meeting with Dick Cheney. (Okay, bad example – real photographs of that probably already exist.) I guess what I'm saying is, the "Times" could have made it more of a slap-on-the-wrist situation in this case, since he didn't change the content, only the composition. It's tantamount to Photoshopping a tree out of the way, to make the image clearer.
Back when O.J. Simpson was an accused murderer and not yet an acquitted murderer, Time magazine ran a photo of him on their cover which they had digitally altered to make him appear darker. To me, that's a greater violation because its intent is to subconsciously sway the viewer's opinion of what the image shows.
And, Newsweek straightened the teeth of Carlisle, Iowa, housewife Bobbi McCaughey, when she gave birth to septuplets in 1997. Not exactly unethical, but kind of mean considering McCaughey was sure to see the photo.
So, maybe the "Times" overreacted a bit. I wonder if their response wouldn't have been more measured if the coalition soldier had been carrying the baby and looking plenty heroic. Considering that the American news media is fully complicit in the Pentagon's conspicuous propaganda war, I'm betting an image that was altered to improve the perceived nobility of coalition forces would have been just peachy with "Times" leadership.
It seems like a convenient time to take a firm stand on the concept of "journalistic integrity." Accounts of the war from every major news source have been sickeningly jingoistic and transparently ignorant of anything but the party line from the White House and the Pentagon. NBC and MSNBC fired Peter Arnett just for expressing his opinion on the state of the war so far, and FoxNews still airs promos trying to make Arnett a liability for two networks who no longer employ him. Everybody is pandering to a nationalistic fervor that exists not in the hearts and minds of American viewers, but only in the Bush administration's attempt to further its own political agenda. They checked their "journalist" badge at the door about 18 months ago.
Yeah, Walski shouldn't have done it, but it seems a little ironic to single him out; implying that all the other reports coming out of Iraq are, by contrast, "reality."
