Photojournalism Keeping it real
In the mid to late nineties the digital camera began to change photography. As was predicted the impact on photojournalism has been profound. Digital image capture has raised many ethical concerns in the journalism industry as a whole.
More often than not a press photographer has little control over how their images are used, However they are the first to take the brunt of blame.
The purpose of this site is to address these issues of image manipulating and what is tantamount to a propaganda driven press creating stories and slanted editorials from the images of photojournalist rather than documenting the truth. News agencies in some instances have become a political arm of a government all unto itself. Creating or bending the news from images either modified taken out of context.
What we do:
We as an organization inspect images published by
the news outlets for signs of manipulation or
misrepresentation, sometimes acting on tips from the
public and even news insiders in order to bring these
fraudulent representations to the light.
photojournalism pho·to·jour·nal·ism (fō'tō-jûr'nə-lĭz'əm)
n. journalism that presents a story primarily through
the use of pictures.
Photojournalism is a particular form of
photography (the collecting, editing, and presenting of
images for publication or broadcast as news material )
that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is
now usually understood to refer only to still images,
and in some cases to video used in broadcast journalism.
Photojournalism is distinguished from other close
branches of photography (such as documentary
photography, street photography or celebrity
photography) by the qualities of:
Relevance — the images have meaning in the context of a
published chronological record of events.
Objectivity — the situation implied by the images is a
fair and accurate representation of the events they
depict.
Narrative — the images combine with other news elements,
to inform and give insight to the viewer or reader.
Photojournalists must make photographic decisions
instantly and be in complete command of their equipment,
often while exposed to the same risks (natural or man
made disasters, war, rioting, crime etc.) that are faced
by participants and the copy collecting journalists. The
fact that they often do not have the option to stand
back or wait until the dangers of an event are over
dictates they may take even more risks.
The Photojournalistic Approach to Ethics
In our opinion the only image manipulation acceptable
in an image depicting news events (straight
photojournalism). are as follows:
See: Guide lines set by Digital Custom Corporation
Any Digital Postproduction beyond these are
unacceptable. As photographers we are not always in
control of how the images we capture are used and
manipulated however we are responsible and must be heard
on this subject.
Digital Photojournalist .org
Press Photographers Photojournalists and Photojournalism
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