Bias at Photojournalism.

A photograph can explain an event in much greater depth than text. Most of the time, news media uses photographs to add insight to a story and news photograph become one of the most important tools that the media uses.

However, just as photograph can help to describe a story, it can also mislead readers and alter the truth behind the story. Usually, it is done on purpose rather than most of the time being blamed as sloppy editorial jobs. Regardless, photo bias is a very dangerous phenomenon especially in the Middle East and yet, it is widely acted by irresponsible journalist.

Since young, I know that a picture tells a thousand words but what bothers me is whose word they are telling?

Several manipulations of news photographs have brought the world to attention. For example,

“Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog exposed this Reuters photo which shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image.”Reuters subsequently admitted that the photo had been doctored and fired photographer Adnan Hajj, whose other photos became subject to investigation”

Source: Honestreporting.com

The explanation that given by Reuters senior editor, Paul Holmes is that the pictures was handled by a junior level employee on a very busy day and it is totally a human error and not with malicious intention.

So, if a picture tells a thousand words, how much does an edited picture tells? It is time for publications to realise and wake up from their awfully deceitful act to manipulate reader’s mind. They should know that they should stop the manipulation before the readers lose trust in photojournalism. Lester (1999) once said that, “the threat to credibility is irreversible if the public starts to mistrust the integrity of the news photograph”, it will “diminish the journalistic impact and self-respect, and the importance of photograph as communication”.

If they want to be respected, they should start treating their job with ethics.

References:

Honest Reporting UK n.d., Bias and Photojournalism, http://www.honestreporting.co.uk/photoBias.asp. Last accessed 12th June 2010.

Lester, PL 1999, Chapter six: Photo manipulation, Photojournalism an Ethical Approach, http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/chapter6.html. Last accessed 13th June 2010.