Ethics

1. Ethics COM 241 Photography I

2. Ethical foundations • Utilitarian • Do what is the “greatest good for greatest number of people” • Show horrors of war, tragedy of accidents, hardship of poverty • Rationale: showing pictures of accidents might cause voters to pass laws requiring air bags, etc.

3. In response to starvation in Somalia, the U.S. sent in peace keeping forces to stop fighting between war lords and help distribute food. A U.S. soldier was killed by followers of one of the war lords and dragged through the city streets. This picture, taken at great personal danger to the photographer, resulted in a quick reversal of U.S. policy and troops were pulled out of Somalia. Paul Watson / Toronto Star

4. This photo by Stanley Forman of collapsing fire escape was published on the front page of hundreds of papers across the country. The women fell to her death while the child miraculously survived. After this picture ran Boston’s fire safety laws were changed. Stanley Foreman / Boston Herald-American

5. Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo of a Vietnamese colonel executing a suspected Viet Cong sympathizer on a Saigon street. During the war the South Vietnamese were our allies but this photo showed cruelty of the officer. This photo is credited with helping to change public sentiment about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Eddie Adams / Wide World Photos

6. Opposing views • Absolutist • Individuals have right of privacy • Golden rule • “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” • Put yourself in place of grieving parent

7. This picture was shot when photographer arrived on scene of an accident in which teenage boy had driven his new car into a lake and had drowned. The photographer noticed this young women, a friend of the victim, crying over the tragedy. David Longstreath / The Daily Oklahoman

8. Coverage of tragedies • Photos provide information • Pictures of grief personalize the news • In a way statistics can’t • On the other side there’s the privacy of the friend, relative grieving

9. The Pantagraph/STEPHANIE OBERLANDER Surrounded by family and friends, Amanda Hamm grieves during the funeral service for her three children Monday morning (Sept. 8) at Memorial Park Cemetery in Clinton.

10. Mourning a life - Friends and relatives of Luis Alberto Vital, 17, mourn during a funeral service in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Oct. 24. Vital was among the victims of a shootout during a teen's birthday party. More than 12,000 people have died this year in Mexico's drug war. Raymundo Ruiz / AP

11. Role of photographer • To inform public, record the news • But what about when photographer witnesses crime, accident, tragedy • Person stealing TV set • Child caught in an auto accident • Apartment building on fire • Person committing suicide

12. Pennsylvania State Treasurer Budd Dwyer was facing a 55-year prison sentence for taking kickbacks when, during a press conference, he pulled out a gun, placed it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. This is the first shot transmitted by AP. Two more followed, one of Dwyer putting the gun in his mouth, and the other just after he pulled the trigger.

13. This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The child was crawling toward a United Nations food camp about a kilometer away. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer who left the scene after chasing the vulture away.

14. Pictures containing dead bodies • Some refuse to publish • Cite respect for victim’s family, privacy • Others publish • Benefit society even though family may object • Reduce swimming accidents, stricter enforcement of city codes, etc.

15. This is a photo that ran on the front page of the Detroit Free Press of a firefighter carrying a dead child from a home in which seven brothers and sisters locked alone inside had died in a fire. In Detroit tradition, the doors and windows in the house had been barricaded or barred to keep burglars out. Bill Eisner / Detroit Free Press

16. After a major series of indictments, arrests and allegations, Miami City Commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr. apparently couldn’t take it anymore. On July 27, 2005, he walked into the Miami Herald lobby, waited long enough for police to arrive, then pulled out a Sig Sauer pistol and shot himself in the head.

17. This is John Hart’s photo that ran in the Bakersfield Californian of lifeless 5-year-old Edward Romero, lying in plastic body bag and surrounded by grieving family members. The paper received 400 phone calls, 500 letters and a bomb threat. The editor subsequently ran an apology to readers. Number of drownings in the Bakersfield area dropped from 14 to 2 in the month after the photo ran. John Hart / Bakersfield Californian

18. Matters of taste Most papers published this photo of former vice president Nelson Rockerfeller “giving the finger” to a crown of hecklers at an airport in Binghamton, New York. Don Black / Bihnhamton Press and Sun-Bulletin

19. This photo of convicted child-murderer Richard Allen Davis was taken following the jury’s guilty verdict in the trial. The photo, which ran on Bay Area papers’ front pages generated over 1,200 messages (e-mails, fax, letters, etc.) to the San Jose Mercury News, 817 favorable, 481 unfavorable.

20. Setting up photos • In this photo, photographer suggested to fireman that going over to pool and splashing water on his head would make nice shot • Initially photographer suspended w/o pay • Later reassigned to non-editorial job

21. Initially photographer tried to write on fan’s feet but pen ran out of ink and subject’s feet were too dirty. The fan went to a restroom, washed his feet and came back with “Yeah Eckerd” written on his feet. Photographer at another paper took photo of photographer trying to write words on subject’s foot. As result this photographer was fired from paper. Had worked for St. Petersburg Times over 17 years. Norman Zeisloft / St. Petersburg Times

22. Digital alteration • July 1992: This cover of Texas Monthly magazine shows the then Texas Governor Ann Richards astride a Harley-Davidson Motorcycle. This picture was created by splicing the head of Richards onto the body of a model.

23. Martha Stewart gets new body in Newsweek March 2005:On its cover Newsweek features what appears to be a photo of Ms. Stewart but is actually an image combining a photo of her face and one of a model's body. The idea, an editor at the magazine said, was to portray Ms. Stewart as she may appear when she emerges from prison - slimmer and stronger than ever. Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, emphasized that a credit on Page 3 with the table of contents of the magazine made clear that the image on the cover was a composite. "In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration," she said. Janice E. Castro, director of graduate journalism programs at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, said the image did not look completely artificial and might be mistaken for an unmodified news photo, which would be a concern in terms of media credibility.

24. August 1989: The cover of TV Guide displayed this picture of daytime talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. This picture was created by splicing the head of Winfrey onto the body of actress Ann-Margret, taken from a 1979 publicity shot. The composite was created without permission of Winfrey or Ann-Margret, and was detected by Ann-Margret's fashion designer, who recognized the dress.

25. February 1982: In this National Geographic magazine cover story on Egypt, the Great Pyramids of Giza, in a horizontal picture by Gordon Gahen, were "squeezed" together to fit the magazine's vertical format. Tom Kennedy, who became the director of photography at National Geographic after the cover was manipulated, stated that "We no longer use that technology to manipulate elements in a photo simply to achieve a more compelling graphic effect.

26. February 1994: This digital composite of Olympic ice skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan appeared on the cover of New York Newsday. The picture showed the rivals practicing together, shortly after an attack on Kerrigan by an associate of Harding's husband. The picture caption reads: "Tonya Harding, left, and Nancy Kerrigan, appear to skate together in this New York Newsday composite illustration. Tomorrow, they'll really take to the ice together."

27. April 2005: This digital composite of actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, then rumored to have a romantic relationship, appeared on the cover of Star Magazine. The picture of Pitt was taken in Anguilla, a Caribbean island, in January 2005. The picture of Jolie was taken in Virginia some time in 2004. On page 8 is a disclaimer noting the image is a "composite of two photographs." This composite was purchased from Big Pictures, a London-based photography agency, for $500,000.

28. September 2000: Hoping to illustrate its diverse enrollment, the University of Wisconsin at Madison doctored a photograph on a brochure cover by digitally inserting a black student in a crowd of white football fans. The original photograph of white fans was taken in 1993. The additional black student, senior Diallo Shabazz, was taken in 1994. University officials said that they spent the summer looking for pictures that would show the school's diversity -- but had no luck.

29. The original photograph of just white fans was taken in 1993.

30. June 1994: This digitally altered photograph of OJ Simpson appeared on the cover of Time magazine shortly after Simpson's arrest for murder. The photograph was manipulated from the original mug-shot that appeared, unaltered, on the cover of Newsweek. Time magazine was subsequently accused of manipulating the photograph to make Simpson appear "darker" and "menacing".

31. Katie Couric suddenly loses 20 pounds… or did she? The original picture, on left, was snapped in May and was widely circulated to the media as an official photo of Couric. The touched-up photo of Couric, on right, appears on the inside of the September issue of Watch! which is distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines flights.

32. March 31, 2007: The Toledo Blade ran photo taken just before a Bluffton baseball game. Five members of the team had recently died in tragic bus crash and this was the first game since the tragedy. Photographer, Allan Dietrich, said he transmitted photo accidentally. A week later Dietrich was forced to resign from the paper after a 18-year career there.

34. NPPA's Code of Ethics prohibits the digital manipulation of news photographs. “It is tempting to want to correct a flaw in an otherwise significant photograph, but whether it is done by photographer, editor, or lab tech, once a ‘moment’ has been captured on film or on digital media, we no longer have the right to change that image in any way except for minor dodging, burning, or cropping,” - John Long NPPA’s Ethics & Standards Committee chairperson

35. (cont’d) “The legs in this photo are annoying, but they are there, in everyone’s frame, and ‘there’ is where they have to remain. Removing small details may be just a little lie, but the reading public does not make such distinctions. Big or small, significant or insignificant, a lie is a lie. And the public does not want to be lied to at all. Our credibility is all we have to offer the public and it must be protected. We cannot change the content of our photographs. We cannot lie.”

36. Political Campaigning Bessemer Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson distributed a flier for her mayoral campaign that includes the photo to the left. Davidson claims Alabama football coach Nick Saban is endorsing her campaign, but the Alabama athletics staff says no endorsement was made. Davidson acknowledged Tuesday night a photo shown below of Saban and his wife, Terry, from 2007 was altered to include her.

37. AFP photographer Emmanuel Dunand captured the photo above in the evening after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

38. NPR published the photo on its Website and afterwards received a message from the woman in the photo (whose identity wasn’t known at the time), Aline Marie. Marie wasn’t pleased that her photograph had been snapped without her permission and subsequently shared around the world. Dunand -- he was simply doing his job of taking photos to “help tell the story to the world.”

39. A Washington Post photographer submitted a photo that had been Photoshopped to hide a person in the background of the image to the White House News Photographers Association's annual awards. The un-altered photograph had originally been publishedin the Washington Post last year. 

40. Because of that doctoring, the photograph -- Tracy Woodward's "State Champion" -- was "immediately disqualified" from the awards contest, according to a Feb. 25 report on the WHNPA's website.

41. “AP’s reputation is paramount and we react decisively and vigorously when it is tarnished by actions in violation of our ethics code,” said Vice President and Director of Photography Santiago Lyon. “Deliberately removing elements from our photographs is completely unacceptable and we have severed all relations with the freelance photographer in question. He will not work for the AP again in any capacity.” Narciso Contreras, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for AP (1/23/2014)