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Photographer Fired For Digitally Altering Photo
bewert writes "A sign of things to come? Is this kind of thing happening without anyone catching it? This short article notes that war photog Brian Walski was fired for combining elements from two photos to make one with 'better composition'.
Here is the 'Editor's Note' detailing the transgression. It's not really highlighted on their front page ;) I wonder how often this type of Photoshopping is done without anyone noticing it? To paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?"..." Another submitter points out an article examining digitally altered magazine covers. Slashdot has done several stories on unnoticeable digital alterations; here's 1, 2, 3 old stories to peruse.
If this were an artistic piece for a magazine, no problem. Hair on Christie Brinkley's upper lip, no problem.
A war photo that is altered so the depiction is inaccurate is unacceptable on any scale. There is not concrete place you can draw a line and say "this much alteration is okay, but this much changes the story".
News commentary can be editorialized by any anchor. Pictures and video have alway been held in higher standing for thier direct integrity. This will rais equestions.
The point is that _anything_ doctored cannot be considered news. If that became standard practice it would be so easy to abuse.
Pictures are taken as evidence to be an exact representation of what they are looking at. If you can't trust pictures in a newspaper or magazine, you can't trust the newspaper or magazine, period.
This was definitely the right decision.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Which one is the original - this or this.
The consensus on the BBS I found these at was that both are touched. Go figure.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Photography is already biased enough depending on what you LEAVE OUT of the photo, or how you juxtapose certain elements, or use telephoto to change the size-distance ratio of objects. Use a long enough lens, and it looks like the kid running across the street is about to be bowled over by the tank, when in fact the tank is a block away.
Anything other than news photos and it's fair game.
I looked for 20 minutes and I couldn't find him anywhere!
Or get it from the horses mouth here
It's a slippery slope. Once it's OK to alter photos as long as you preserve the "theme," all that's left is for a newspaper with a deluded idea of the "theme" of a photo to seriously alter a photo's contents. This already happens all the time with quotations being taken out of context and having phrases parenthetised for "clarity".
IMHO, that's too simplistic of a way to make a decision.
...and you're telling me that coverage of the news by the talking heads is pure fact and nothing else?
I bet some of the cameras being used by the photographers don't have "red eye" reduction. Should they be fired too? Won't the red dot make the person look angry?
C'mon folks, let's look at this more critically.
I strongly disagree for two reasons. One is that the paper already had a stated policy of no alterations, period. Once that policy has been adopted, they have to follow it. Two is that they chose the right policy. There has to be a bright, obvious line between what is allowable and what isn't. If you let a photographer alter things for artistic effect then somebody has to sit there and decide in each case whether the changes are just artistic or if they've distorted the truth. Only by having an objective standard of no alterations at all can you avoid that problem.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
they photoshoped the heads of wiesels onto the bodies of the french and german government. photoshop has no place in news gathering.
Despite a tremendous expenditure of willpower, I just can't bring myself to give a damn what Bill O'Reilly thinks.
Yes, the modifications were mostly compositional, but there is a *very good reason* for the L.A. Times banning the alteration of photos: because once you do it, the only difference between minor compositional alterations and ones that change the content in more significant ways is *just a matter of degree*. In other words, once you cross that threshold, the amount of alteration or significance of the alteration that is permissible is only a matter of judgement, a moving line in the sand. Banning such alteration of photographs outright shows good judgement by the publisher and demonstrates their commitment against the falsification of photographic evidence.
Of course, this does nothing to prevent completely staged photographs, but at least it's something.
I can see firing the photographer if he was trying to make something appear to have happened that didn't. That's not the case here. The original and re-touched photograph are conveying the same thing. -- ChaoticChaos
Fade into courtroom interior..
"Your honor, prosecution presents exhibit A. We took the liberty of touching up this photo. While it still represents the events that took place the day Mr. Chaos murdered his girlfriend, it doesn't make anything appear to have happened that didn't. It conveys the same thing."
"OBJECTION!!! Conjecture!"
"Sustained! Counsel, please approach the bench."
In one picture, the soldier is waving his hand and the guy with the baby is ignoring him; in the touched up one, the baby-carrier is looking at the soldier. That's a significant difference - what is this soldier doing, and is he getting any respect? In the first picture, it looks like his hand is up just to counter-balance himself as he's walking. In the composite, it looks like he's waving at people and they are dutifully following his orders.
I was the main non-sports fotographer for a newspaper in college & talked with my editor about this. Sure, you can digitally take out something as simple as a fence that's blocking a view, but then that implies that there is no fence to block the view (and thus no security/privacy barrier). And that's not the truth.
So, I agree with the editors here. No manipulation should be tolerated at all. The covers of magazines are different, though (and legally recogonized as different, too) - they serve as an attraction to buy the magazine, and not news reporting.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Gee, I saw the 3 photographs and really don't see what the big deal is.
Directly from the article:
Journalism ethics forbid changing the content of news photographs, and it is specifically barred in the newspaper's policy.
So, he violated his employers policy, and he exercised bad ethics. Pretty simple...
Rember O'Reilly made his name on inside edition, a tabloid news program. This is why Fox another tabloid news outlet loves him. No one thinks hes a intellectual hes just the clown of the moment, and any one watching Fox news has probably never heard of PBS let alone watched it.
As a former journalism student and someone who has been in print a few times in High School and College, I think I can say what part of the Big Deal is.
Journalism is supposed to be accurate and unbiased. In practice this rarely happens, but the theory is there. The paper has a policy forbidding the modifying of photos, and they enforce it.
It's similar to the honor code many schools use. Cheating only hurts the student in the long run, but it can still get them kicked out of the school.
The point is the moral and ethical code. Journalists have a moral imperative to report the truth, and any modification, any stretching of the truth is a step down a slippery slope towards outright lies and falsehoods.
The photographer was fired for good reason. A modified photo is fine as a piece of "art" but as journalism it brings the entire publication's integrity and honesty into question.
I could go on, but my hope is that the majority of the people reading this thread realize that what the photographer did was a violation. It's not like photoshopping a playboy shoot to remove a pimple. This is falsifying the news. It's a small fake, a minor tweak, but it's still presenting falsehood as reality.
And before you make a wise ass reply about the fallacy of journalistic integrity in the real world, keep in mind, I did say "In practice this rarely happens".
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I bet some of the cameras being used by the photographers don't have "red eye" reduction....
C'mon folks, let's look at this more critically.
Ok... red eye reduction removes something that wasn't there originally. Unless the person you took a photograph has bright red eyes you are removing something that the camera artifically inserted into the image. The same goes with removing lense flair, colour balance correction, etc. This is *totally* different than manipulating the image by adding or subtracting content.
any one watching Fox news has probably never heard of PBS let alone watched it.
...and they'd probably have trouble spelling it too.
<Rimshot>
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Wait, if this is fake, then is it possible that Bert is not evil?!
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
This happens more often than you think. Hopefully not for journalistic photos, mind you. But advertisers modify pictures all the time. Or did you really think that models always have perfect skin? Thank you, smudge tool!
I recently did some work for a friend who is putting on a play (shameless plug, if you live in San Francisco, go see "Shirley Mental") and she had taken some publicity photos. Unfortunately, none of them were perfect, so she had me combine the background from one with actors in another, and in another case remove a third actor from a shot to more prominently feature two others.
For journalistic photos, though, it would be unethical. Oddly enough, simply cropping an unacceptable bit out of a photo would probably be considered okay with most papers. Adding things is a definite no-no.
I can understand how a journalist could forget that though, considering how easy it is to modify photos. In many cases, it wouldn't matter, but a newspaper simply can't afford to be seen as making things up. They can't have people questioning whether what they see in a paper is real or not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A bank employee was fired for combining his account with that of a customer with a much higher balance.
When asked about the reason for his actions he simply stated that the combined balanced looked much more dramatic on his bank statements.
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
Right, the original poster was just pandering to the mindless slashbots who see anything negative or the least bit suspicious as a part of a conspiracy by the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft/Federal Government to outlaw Linux, kill babies, and enslave the world. What's nice about it this time is that for once, the little snide commentary comes in italics, as part of the posters words. Nine times our of ten, similarly paranoid remarks appear as the EDITOR's words. If you believe that this LA Times reporter violated his committment to journalistic integrity and OBJECTIVITY by using these photos, I suggest you take a closer look at Slashdot itself. The spin that gets put on the articles is just absolutely ridiculous.
On a side note... you might find it interesting to note that the United States Department of Defense wrote a memo entitled "An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations." Basically, the paper is a review of information warfare tactics, and an analysis of whether or not some aspects of information warfare violate the Geneva Convention and other international treaties regarding the rules of war. The report concludes that, "Similarly, it might be possible to use computer 'morphing' techniques to create an image of the enemy's chief of state informing his troops that an armistice or cease-fire agreement had been signed. If false, this would also be a war crime."
So, despite the fact that the government had absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with this story, even if they did, the government cannot digitally alter wartime photos because it violates the Geneva Convention. Granted, there are other things that one might be inclined NOT to trust the government for, but this is NOT one of them. Please move along...
-Matt
-Matt
Duke '05
If you have a copy of the mag sitting around, please look at the photo and tell me if you agree.
I find it sickening that a supposedly respectable publication would edit historical photographs for the sake of modern political correctness. We wouldn't want our young kids learning that, way back during the Depression, people smoked cigarettes, would we?
It takes a severe cluelessness to draw that conclusion. It's obvious in the soldier's stance that he's not pointing anything at anyone, and furthermore, between his uniform, his weapon, and the supplemental information, he is quite clearly British.
"Models that appear in this magazine may have certain features enhanced or exagerated. The pictures in this magazine should be construed as fantasy imagery only."
The layout department for Sports Illustrated was on I think the "Best Damn Sports Show Period" saying that most of the swimsuit models legs are elongated and breast "bubbled" after the shoot with PowerBook G4s on spot and then further at headquarters. He made a joke saying that Niki Taylor was so short and they wanted her on a two page wide spread. So, they lengthened her legs. If she were real, she'd me Yao Ming's sister!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Scientology has been caught retro-doctoring photos Stalin style to remove people after they've fallen out of favour, like Reed Slatkin who's in big trouble for a long-running investment ponzi scam.
I hope the press has better ethics than Scientology.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Okay, there have been several comments on this so far but I feel obligated to chime in since digital photo enhancement/adjustment/manipulation is part of my occupation.
The photo, with the boy, is real. Dispite the fact that the selective discoloration appears to be conveniently placed on the tank directly behind him, those things do happen in photography. All the shadows match the lighting angles and the objects in the scene, given that the sun was at a very low angle and the shadows compressed (vertically, extended laterally) by the angle of the photographer. Any manipulation which may have been done is not distinguishable at this resolution.
The boy *removed* is most obviously fabricated for reasons both editorial (with regards to composition) and technical. Technically: the yellow material visible against the structure in the background behind and underneath the tank (which looks to be signage or equipment, it's difficult to make out given the depth of field used) is utterly plagued by a patterned replication, showing unskilled cloning tool usage. The front armor is not only magically repaired in this version, but also has tiles which mirror each other at their joint. The now inexplicable shadow which matched the boy previously remains, and is too sharp to be cast in conjunction with the antenna (or whatever it may be) contributing to the one next to it, even given the vertical/perspective shadow compression which makes this a more forgiving detail.
Editorially, that's *not* the way to shoot a tank. Were it the subject, the depth of field is acceptable but it's too large in frame which would distract from it; the image has also been shot to compress multiple planes of perspective, but the reasoning for that choice is completely devoid from this version. There remains no balance, sense of motion, or romanticism of the elements which would suggest this to be a professional photograph. Given that other talent is still obvious (use of lighting, combination of aperature use even with telephoto for precision DoF control) these omissions make it suspect. It's only when the relationship between tank and boy are present that the photo makes journalistic or artistic sense.
It's like watching one of those "funniest home video" gag ("gag" is an editorial pun here on my part) shows where people start trying to pick apart how the situation could have happened or been staged, without noticing the signs which do not appear in *front* of the camera: filming scenes without significant memorable of photographic content, panning to locations before the action occurs in preparation, etc.
There are multiple ways to tell a fake, and gentlemen I do tell you: the "no boy"'s a hack job.
(As a slight aside, the tank appears to be Israeli given the modern hebrew writing thereon and was not in motion when the photograph was taken)
Any spoon would be too big.
scripsit mindstrm:
My saddest moment in this respect was watching a young waiter at a Cairo restaurant being loundly and, um, colorfully berated (in English, of course) by an American for not being able to bring him A-1 steak sauce. It was 4 July, and they had festooned the place with red-white-and-blue streamers and American flags, and attempted a U.S.-style barbecue, to make the expats feel welcome.
No, actually it was when a Jeep full of drunken Americans pulled into an oasis in the Sahara (eight hour drive to get there, and they'd been drinking the whole way), and proceeded to try to buy people's patio furniture from them. In English. With U.S. dollars. (If you're an American, imagine a drunken Arab stumbling into your house and waving around wads of Saudi rials, urgently demanding something in Arabic.) Unfortunately for me, I not only came from the same country, I knew the guys.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.