Concord Monitor Ran Doctored Reader-Submitted Photo
June 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This story illustrates the challenges media organizations face when accepting user-generated content. If you’ve sat next to me eating dinner before a Jazz game this year, you know where I think user-generated content is going. If you haven’t, I think it’s coming to news organizations in a big way. But there is a big difference in the content generated by professionals following the ethics of journalism and the content generated by amateurs.
A snippet from the PDN article:
The Concord (N.H.) Monitor acknowledged that a reader-submitted photo published in Tuesday’s newspaper had been doctored.
The picture, showing a group of local students who planted an herb garden in memory of a school secretary who died of cancer, was “manipulated in order to fit all the students in,” the paper said.
A snippet from the Concord Monitor article, “Pictures can lie, but not in a newspaper”:
Monitor photo editor Dan Habib has created an ethics policy that says: “Manipulation of photographs in any manner that might mislead, confuse or otherwise misrepresent the subject or event is strictly prohibited. We will not change backgrounds, reverse photos, add, delete or move objects.”
The philosophy behind the rule is simple: Readers must be able to trust that the photos they see and the articles they read in their newspaper are true. Nothing takes precedence over our credibility.
Links:
2nd Place Photo Essay - Polygamy’s Hidden Face
June 20, 2007 | 4 Comments
As contest season winds down a couple more awards appeared on my desk at the Tribune.
My work covering polygamy last year was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists Utah Headliners Chapter.
The judges said, “The photographer overcame so many challenges in telling this story. Nice images of a seldom-viewed subject.”
Very true. Working the polygamy beat has been very rewarding, as I’ve met so many interesting people on all sides of the issue. But it’s also been very frustrating because I can see the amazing photographs just out of my reach. If only I could get better access! To all of you who let us in and let me photograph at least some part of your lives, my deepest thanks.
Here is my winning essay, The Hidden Face of Polygamy:
Polygamist Kelly Fischer covers his face as he walks into the Kingman, Arizona courthouse facing charges of sex with a minor. Fischer, a follower of FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, was found guilty and sentenced to six weeks in jail after fathering a child with his 16-year-old stepdaughter, who he had taken as a plural wife.
On the wall in polygamist Marvin Wyler’s Colorado City, Arizona home are portraits of his 34 children. Wyler was kicked out of Warren Jeffs’ FLDS Church and has since been trying to find his own spiritual path as an independent fundamentalist.
Polygamist Winston Blackmore (right) bids one of his children goodbye in the morning as one of his young wives leads others away. Some of Blackmore’s wives (he has an estimated fifteen to twenty wives) live in the motel-like building in the background, on a rural farm in Lister, British Columbia.
Elsie Blackmore picks dandelions on her family’s rural farm in Lister, British Columbia. Blackmore is one of nearly one-hundred children fathered by polygamist Winston Blackmore.
Maraya Blackmore covers her ears as her sister Sally Blackmore tunes an electric guitar during a rehearsal of the family rock band. With nearly one-hundred brothers and sisters, there is always an activity going on and someone to play with on the family farm in Lister, British Columbia.
Candice White, the second wife and widow of polygamist Gary White, is facing difficulties getting her share of her husband’s social security benefits for her children. As polygamy is illegal, wives taken after the first are wed in a spiritual marriage which is not legally binding. White’s children are Charlie Ann White (left, 11), Gary Ryan White (center, 7), and Kelly Elaine White (right, 13).
Young men from the polygamist community The Work, in Centennial Park, Arizona, spend two years of their lives serving the community in work missions. Families in the community take turns feeding large groups of these missionaries as they work construction or other jobs, help the needy, and do volunteer work.
Gary Engels, Mohave County’s Investigator, has been assigned to investigate crimes in the isolated polygamist community of Colorado City, Arizona. Engels faces an especially challenging law enforcement task in a closed community where nearly every resident refuses to talk to him, leaving him isolated and and worn down.
A large truck trailing Investigator Gary Engels’ every move is a show of intimidation by Warren Jeffs’ FLDS church security. Engels has been assigned to investigate crimes in the isolated polygamist community of Colorado City, Arizona and is also trying to locate the polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs, who was then on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list.
Handcuffed and flanked by Las Vegas Metro Police Department SWAT officers, FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs appeared before Judge James M. Bixler in the Clark County Regional Justice Center. Jeffs waived an extradition hearing, agreeing to be returned to Utah to face charges related to allegedly arranging an underage marriage. Jeffs is considered a prophet of God to his estimated 10,000 polygamist followers scattered throughout the North American continent.
Watermelon Eating Contest
June 19, 2007 | 2 Comments
The assignment was to photograph the Juneteenth Festival a week or so ago. Juneteenth is a celebration of the end of slavery. And while Utah is mostly populated by whites, Salt Lake City has what seems like a festival every weekend for the diverse cultures who have gathered here. These are fun events, often filled with great food, live music and colorfully costumed dancers.
There wasn’t a lot going on at Juneteenth when I arrived. In fact, it was a little quiet. A band had just finished their set. And while I was interested in photographing the small time professional wrestlers, I passed. I needed a photo that went with the story and theme of the festival. I settled for face painting, kids playing, and a photo of a food vendor.
Then the announcer called all the kids over to the pavilion for a competition. An eating competition. A watermelon-eating competition, to be specific.
This is where it got interesting.
Of course I photographed it. As a news photographer you shoot everything and think about it later. It’s how you use the photographs that matters. You can do all of your thinking about how to use them later.
I got some really cute photographs of the kids eating watermelon. But there was that voice in the back of my head: Should I use these photographs?
On one hand is the argument that “it happened” and I was simply documenting the event.
On the other hand is the argument that the very image has been a stereotype since the days of slavery.
I sent other photographs instead and left the watermelon shots unedited on my computer.
What would you have done?
There’s an interesting column by Keith Woods, dealing with a similar incident. Click here to read it.
Magnum Photographers Take On The Digital World
June 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
From PDN, an interesting story from Magnum’s 60th Anniversary festival. Four Magnum members (Philip Jones Griffiths, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, and Larry Towell) talk about the new era of digital. A snippet:
Griffiths concluded his remarks with a rather pessimistic observation that drew approving laughs from the audience.
“I believe that we can’t ignore a simple, simple fact, and that is that the world is being dumbed down,” he said.
Here.
Mark Luthringer’s typologies
June 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
From the muse-ings blog:
I love this selection of photographic grids by Mark Luthringer - his Ridgemont Typologies - typologies of our mundane world. In a way they also make me rather angry as they highlight so strongly the generic and homogenized nature of the environment around us and the pathetic level of thought and imagination that goes into designing not just the buildings and places we live and work in, but the objects we use everyday.
Here.
