White lies and the thin edge of the wedge

It comes as no surprise that North Korean state media digitally altered pictures from Dear Leader’s funeral procession last week. The ploy came unstuck when they were compared to pictures shot at the same time and place by Japanese agency, Kyodo News.

When I say “unstuck” I mean they were caught out, but not that Pyongyang would be at all troubled by that. And North Koreans themselves would be none the wiser, of course.

Unlike the efforts of dictators passed, the digital manipulation in this case was minor and does not appear to have much of an impact on the image beyond the aesthetic. And so some people have asked how much it really matters.

That’s a common question in these circumstances; why adjustments to a picture that improve it while having no other material impact shouldn’t in fact be condoned. We’re talking about cloning open eyes on top of squinting ones, removing litter from the foreground, power lines from the background or a tree branch that’s growing out of someone’s head. Otherwise, why then is dodging, burning, cropping or colour adjustment any different?

It’s surprising how often you hear this argument from strong advocates of photography, given how disturbingly misguided that makes them.

For the rebuttal, public trust is a pretty good place to start.

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In defence of the press

Even in its darkest days Australia functions well by any standard. That’s not by chance but the result of lessons learnt by our ancestors and the systems they put in place as a result. In fact we do so well that we’re prone to take for granted the institutions that helped us get here, like the rule of law, an apolitical military and a free and independent media — all things you mightn’t notice until they’re missing.

There’s no better case study for this right now than the media. While it comes under public and government attack, there’s scarcely a hint of community interest, much less any popular protest by outraged readers. In theory this should surprise, given the media is meant to be at its core the public advocate, and all. But it doesn’t, and in fact you’ve got to conclude the press had it coming.

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Seeing isn’t quite believing

What a vexed issue photo-retouching is. Magazines and advertisers do it to present audiences with a fantasy and audiences lap up that fantasy and are quite prepared to reject reality if a brand puts that before them instead.

You could blame the magazines and the brands that contrive the pictures, or you could blame the consumers and the readers for generating the demand, or you could criticise the models for validating it all with their participation. It’s a vicious circle in which probably none are without fault.

It’s easy to overstate the problem though. Gratuitous retouching and extreme enhancement is not condoned in the modern news media. If detected, editors take stern action because their journalistic credibility depends on it.

But in the world of entertainment it’s rife.

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Observer vs. participant

Sometimes it takes the fresh perspective of an outsider to have you reconsider something you haven’t thought about in years.

A Q&A panel for students at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that I sat on recently raised a couple of good examples.

To paraphrase one of them: when would it be right for a photographer to put down their camera in order to assist in the emergency or disaster that they’re shooting? And when might it not be?

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What’s old is new again

Disaster, duplicity and deception

God only knows how someone could watch scenes like those which played out live on TV yesterday, showing a tsunami striking Japan, and then go about doctoring photographs of such a disaster for their own twisted entertainment.

As the tsunami made landfall in the north of the country TV pictures show it didn’t so much as blink. The ocean swamped low-lying farmlands at a speed too great for those on the coastal motorways to outrun it but cruelly, just slow enough for them to be able to try.

And within minutes started the falsifications, misrepresentations and internet hoaxes.

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Journalist or activist?

It’s certainly not unheard of for photographers to cast themselves in the role of activist. Good photography helps to make an argument a whole lot more persuasive so the link is no surprise. But we should worry when they blur the line between activist and journalist because you can’t be both, although some examples of those who try can be found amongst photographers who cover war.

There’s a number that describe themselves not as war photographers but as anti-war photographers. We may find the level of commitment required to fulfil this tag admirable, especially when shooting a wedding can pay more than being shot at, but such a description admits they’re pursuing a role that goes beyond neutral observer, impartial witness and professional journalist. It’s an admission that their intention is to portray things in their worst possible light in support of the counter argument, and it gives rise to the claim that their work is propaganda for that cause.

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Photography, balance and bias

Plenty gets said and written about bias in the media. The perception of the extent of it is part of the reason that public confidence in the journalistic trade is often said to be on par with that of used car salespeople. But this is mostly a case of perceptions over reality, where people with bees in their bonnets hunt for “evidence” for as long as it takes them to find it and then call that representative. Still, there’s no doubt that the odd journo does let their worldview colour their work from time to time.

But photography too has plenty of potential to corrupt fair and balanced reporting.

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Who said a photo never lies?

It’s an affront to readers and photographers alike when a newspaper or magazine uses photography to tell a lie. Such dishonesty ranges from publishing a picture that amounts to mild misrepresentation, through to running one that is itself entirely fake.

At the low-end of the scale are the file pictures pretending to be current, or those that are loosely captioned because they aren’t quite of the moment in time they should be, or the photograph of an isolated incident that doesn’t fairly represent the bigger picture but is published anyway because of its attention-grabbing charms.

What we thankfully see less of are examples from the high-end of the scale: the outright and unadulterated lie. But here’s one that is simply off the charts.

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How’s this for digital doctoring?

In Australia we tend to give our media an ample serving of skepticism – more than it deserves if you ask me. But an ethical atrocity like the one unearthed by Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil this week puts most others in the shade.

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