D9 Shooting the truth: Photojournalism

The role of photo journalism is collecting, editing and presenting news material for publication or broadcast. The photo journalism creates images in order to tell and delivery a news story or a one’s story. In addition, the photo journalism includes documentary, social, street and celebrity photography.

Why photojournalists should follow the rules is that because it is a general guideline that helps photojournalists avoid any ethics issues. As well as, according to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), each newspaper, news group or press association you may belong to as a photographer may have its own rules and regulations regarding ethics in photojournalism. If you want to become a photojournalist, it is important to understand how ethics play in your role in reporting the news.

The basic premises of the NPPA's nine standards are:
1. Accurately represent subjects
2. Do not be manipulated by staged photos
3. Avoid bias and stereotyping in work; provide complete information and context
4. Show consideration for subjects
5. Avoid influencing the actions of the photographic subject
6. Editing should not give the wrong impression of the subjects in the photograph
7. Do not compensate persons involved in photographs or in getting a photograph
8. Do not accept gifts or other favors from those involved in a photo
9. Do not purposely interfere with the work of other journalists

The difference between the ethics of taking journalistic photos and the ethics of writing a new story is a picture. The meaning of a picture is a visual representation. Therefore, people cannot touch, but people can feel the situation and see the happen compared to a written news story.

Here is an article that I found. This is very interesting and I agree that photojournalists should do it for only technical issues and not for the purpose of altering the actual image. Here is a story.

The point at which editing becomes an ethics violation is a fine line. For instance, the NPPA takes both an artistic edit and a montage edit to task in 2006. In one instance, the photograph's colors were altered to create a more stunning visual. In the other, two photographs were fused together to create a photo that never really took place. Although the second incident is clearly an ethical violation, the first is not quite as clear, because it was color manipulation. Yet both are breaches of ethics, because they alter the way the events actually looked. Similarly, the altered photograph of Iowan septuplet mom Bobbi McCaughey that appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1997 drew much criticism for appearing to have straightened her teeth. Photojournalists need to take care that when they edit photographs, they do it for technical issues and not for the purpose of altering the actual image.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalism
http://photography.lovetoknow.com/Photojournalism_Ethics