Ethical questions are always there. Should a photographer save a life or just take pictures as the life slips away? Most will say they are there to reflect reality and not to change it. This was Horst Faas' answer when he leaned in close with a 21-mm wide-angle lens, for the AP, to photograph Bengalis torturing suspected traitors in 1972. The victims died. Faas and Michel Laurent, the AP colleague who was with him, won a Pulitzer Prize. They do not think they could have stopped the executions. If they could have, both said at the time, they were not sure what they would have done. Photographers and reporters are supposed to cover news, not shape it. But this can be a very tough call.Nothing can define that set of responses that leads to a picture person's choices. One afternoon in Vietnam, Faas was in the darkroom when Nick Ut brought back film from up the road. South Vietnamese had accidently dropped napalm on civilians. The photos were compelling: a mother cradling a singed child, weeping victims, dramatic close-ups of a fireball. Horst went straight to a picture of a little girl running in panic ahead of the flames.Correspondents tried to talk him out of it. The girl's pubic hairs were visible, and no one would print it; the photo was blurred. "This one," Faas said, ending the discussion. The picture, yet another Pulitzer winner, was the one eveyone remembers from the Vietnam War.The issues are never clear-cut. The presence of a lens, especially on a television camera, can create the news. When Iranian hotheads besieged the U.S. embassy in Tehran, they spent most of the time hanging around in good spirits. The moment anyone raised a camera, they were a chanting, angry mob.With competition so fierce, there is pressure to deliver, to squeeze the most from a story and get it back before anyone else. In Haiti, journalists flew into mayhem in a back corner of the island. An Italian correspondent watched as a group of photographers clustered around one victim who was battered but still alive. She tried to convince them to take him to a doctor. It was too late, they argued; he was beyond hope. But she knew that he could have been saved. Their concern was catching the flight back to dispatch their film.Television camera crews face the same problems as photographers, with the added complications of their medium. The gear is bulkier; the demand is greater to stand there and keep shooting; and if someone does better, everyone else knows it that night when the evening newscasts are put together. As a result, competition blots out other emotions.Sunday, November 15, 2009
Ethical Issues in Media
Ethical questions are always there. Should a photographer save a life or just take pictures as the life slips away? Most will say they are there to reflect reality and not to change it. This was Horst Faas' answer when he leaned in close with a 21-mm wide-angle lens, for the AP, to photograph Bengalis torturing suspected traitors in 1972. The victims died. Faas and Michel Laurent, the AP colleague who was with him, won a Pulitzer Prize. They do not think they could have stopped the executions. If they could have, both said at the time, they were not sure what they would have done. Photographers and reporters are supposed to cover news, not shape it. But this can be a very tough call.Nothing can define that set of responses that leads to a picture person's choices. One afternoon in Vietnam, Faas was in the darkroom when Nick Ut brought back film from up the road. South Vietnamese had accidently dropped napalm on civilians. The photos were compelling: a mother cradling a singed child, weeping victims, dramatic close-ups of a fireball. Horst went straight to a picture of a little girl running in panic ahead of the flames.Correspondents tried to talk him out of it. The girl's pubic hairs were visible, and no one would print it; the photo was blurred. "This one," Faas said, ending the discussion. The picture, yet another Pulitzer winner, was the one eveyone remembers from the Vietnam War.The issues are never clear-cut. The presence of a lens, especially on a television camera, can create the news. When Iranian hotheads besieged the U.S. embassy in Tehran, they spent most of the time hanging around in good spirits. The moment anyone raised a camera, they were a chanting, angry mob.With competition so fierce, there is pressure to deliver, to squeeze the most from a story and get it back before anyone else. In Haiti, journalists flew into mayhem in a back corner of the island. An Italian correspondent watched as a group of photographers clustered around one victim who was battered but still alive. She tried to convince them to take him to a doctor. It was too late, they argued; he was beyond hope. But she knew that he could have been saved. Their concern was catching the flight back to dispatch their film.Television camera crews face the same problems as photographers, with the added complications of their medium. The gear is bulkier; the demand is greater to stand there and keep shooting; and if someone does better, everyone else knows it that night when the evening newscasts are put together. As a result, competition blots out other emotions.
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All over the world codes of conduct have been proposed for journalists. In fact ethics is inseparable from journalism, because the practice of journalism is centred on a set of essentially ethical concepts: freedom, democracy, truth, objectivity, honesty, privacy. If the proper role of journalism is seen as providing information, then the ethical questions focus on one issue: maintaining the quality of the information.
ReplyDeleteThis issue has become a matter of political controversy and public concern. The media is often perceived as being inaccurate and biased.
Photographs and pictures always show only one side of the picture always and therfore what needs to be taken into consideration is that we should have the eye to see the both sides of the story.
ReplyDeleteMedia ethics is the subdivision of applied ethics dealing with the specific ethical principles and standards of media, including broadcast media, film, theatre, the arts, print media and the internet. The field covers many varied and highly controversial topics, ranging from war journalism to Benetton advertising.
ReplyDeleteIn democratic countries, a special relationship exists between media and government. Although the freedom of the media may be constitutionally enshrined and have precise legal definition and enforcement, the exercise of that freedom by individual journalists is a matter of personal choice and ethics. Modern democratic government subsists in representation of millions by hundreds. For the representatives to be accountable, and for the process of government to be transparent, effective communication paths must exist to their constituents. Today these paths consist primarily of the mass media, to the extent that if press freedom disappeared, so would most political accountability. In this area, media ethics merges with issues of civil rights and politics.
ReplyDeleteCommercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. Different types of media can be used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards or direct mail. Advertising may be placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company or other organization.
ReplyDeleteAdvertising is communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services or support political candidates or ideas. Advertising can be displaced on billboards, newspapers, T.V., websites, movies and more.
ReplyDelete