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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Photo-phobia and its unintended consequences

Pardon my focus on the Brits of late but they’ve been dealing with a couple of issues that we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility of facing here one day. The Orphan Works legislation may have only just been defeated, but an equally great threat might be just over the horizon.

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The good news is you still own your photographs

The UK Parliament has just rushed through its Digital Economy Bill which contained that contentious Orphan Works legislation you may remember, but the good news is campaigning British photographers have achieved a major win for us all.

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Orphan Works Bill is the copyright thief’s get out of jail free card

It appears increasingly likely that Britain will pass into law The Digital Economy Bill 2009-2010 which contains an “orphan works” provision similar to what the Americans faced last year.

Orphan works encompass photographs or other types of intellectual property where, for whatever reason, the original creator cannot be found. The Digital Economy Bill seeks to implement a mechanism whereby publications can go ahead and use them anyway without having received the necessary authority to do so from the copyright holder.

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Photography and the Parliament: the rules are an ass

Federal MP Peter Slipper was caught snoozing in the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago. He was photographed by one of his colleagues on their Blackberry. Slipper, who insists he was just resting his eyes, complained to the Speaker who instigated the inevitable inquiry.

It was a bit unfortunate that this coincided with an address to Parliament by the visiting Indonesian head of state, but if I had to endure the sort of workload our MPs seem to I’d be pretty tired too, I guess.

When the picture was published in a Queensland newspaper a few days later, Slipper wasn’t a happy camper and he told the house he wanted the culprit found.

“I also imagine, Mr Speaker, that it makes it difficult for you to discipline members of the press gallery who might be inclined to breach the rules on photography,” Slipper said.

Whoever did it, they’re in good company because the rules controlling photography in the Federal Parliament are so restrictive they are breached almost as often as anything seriously newsworthy needs to be photographed in that place.

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