Photojournalism ethical crisis
Summary:
This article sheds the light on the ethics of photojournalism. It mainly triggers the case in which photographers use harsh circumstances and situations such as wars and famines for their own benefit and popularity. The article is distributed into 5 parts. The Background, the ethical challenge, the evaluation, the discussion of ethical harm and a conclusion. I started by showing the examples I’ll be using in the article. Then I stated the conflict and the ethical challenge that’s related to it. I continued by evaluating my examples and stating their harms and dilemmas. At the end, I added a short conclusion that represents my view of a better path of photojournalism.
Background:
Ethics has wide scope, dealing with the conduct of individuals, groups, institutions, professions, and countries (WARD, 2011, p. 9). Ethics may require us to forego personal benefits, to carry out duties or to endure persecution (WARD, 2011, p. 9). Likely, when it comes to media profession and careers, ethics should highly be respected. Photojournalism, being a substantial section of media, requires ethics as an essential part of the whole work, but does “Ethics” actually have a clear definition when approaching the school of “Photography”? There is no sole arbiter of what is or isn’t ethical, and even if there were, the line isn’t always black and white (Bersak, 2006). Most texts regarding ethics in photojournalism focus on the issue of what might be termed “photographic truth” — whether a particular image accurately represents the subject or whether it misleads the viewer (Bersak, 2006). In this article I included two examples of photos taken by photojournalists that was viewed in the society as unethical. These photos made a huge debate regarding the exploitation of suffering and trauma in severe circumstances and wars from a side in addition to the delivery of unclear news from the other side. One of the examples used was Kevin Carter’s photograph showing a starving tiny girl that was watched by a vulture when crawling to get her food from a nearby feeding center. Carter waited 20 minutes before shooting the picture which kept the people after the release of the photo asking about why he didn’t help the girl rather than watching her threatened and weak. This photo first appeared on the 26th of March 1993 in the New York Times and won the Pulitzer Prize. The picture was taken clearly taken for a professional sake in which Carter’s job in Sudan was to capture an image that shows the extremity of famine in that country. The huge amount of harsh criticism Carter got after the release of the photo and winning the prize, caused him serious depression which was followed with him committing suicide on July 1994.
The second and the third example I’ll be using in the following article were taken during the Vietnam War that lasted from 1955 till 1975. One of these pictures is “Saigon’s Execution” that was taken by Eddie Adams in 1968 showing General Nguyen Ngoc Loan who is a South Vietnamese police chief executing Viet Cong suspect Nguyen Van Lem on the street. The criticism that followed this photo weren’t related to the photo itself but to General Loan who was viewed as a sadist and an oppressor. This photo caused a huge damage for the General’s reputation and his family without figuring out the real story after it. Adams’ “Saigon Execution” photo made its way into countless papers around the world, stripped of context and presented as a war crime caught on film (Stockton, 2017). Without knowing who the “victim” was or why he was shot, the public was left to assume that he was just a random civilian being murdered by a bloodthirsty sadist (Stockton, 2017). The other image that I chose from the Vietnam War is that of the naked napalm girl Kim Phuc caught in the moment of desperation and escape by photographer Nick Ut. This photo was first published in New York Times on the first page and won the Pulitzer Prize. It was highly criticized for its severe content and the privacy of the naked girl. In contrast, it was considered by many Vietnamese citizens a glimpse of the American brutality truth. But, was this really the truth?
The Ethical challenge:
In this article 2 conflicts are represented related to one field which is photojournalism. The first conflict stated is career and self-benefit versus empathy and humanity. During severe circumstances, victims are used as objects that feed the photographer’s benefit, popularity and profession. Is a photojournalist’s career and ranking an excuse to benefit from people’s bareness and weakness in severe circumstances such as starvation and war? Moreover, the second and most important conflict that will be discussed through the article is truthful news vs unclear and fake news in addition to the violation of privacy within photojournalism. All in all, known as the stem of media and journalism, are photojournalists credible enough to show us the whole truth always and without manipulating ethics of privacy and humanity for their own benefit?
Evaluation and Ethical Harm:
There are no certain and fixed rules that best work with the content I’m discussing in this article. Laws in photojournalism are mainly related to copyright aspects in digital and social media. Otherwise photojournalists are committed to various standards and ethical aspects in their daily life. According to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) “Photographic and video images can reveal great truths, expose wrongdoing and neglect, inspire hope and understanding and connect people around the globe through the language of visual understanding”. For photojournalists to make sure they’re doing fulfilling their work rightly they follow some standards that are presented by NPPA and known as the “Code of Ethics”. According to the “Code of Ethics” by NPPA “Photojournalists should be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects”. This means that a photojournalist should be objective, unbiased and honest when doing his/her job. Moreover, as stated in “The Code of Ethics” by NPPA, photojournalists should manage and treat the subjects they got to cover and work over with respect and dignity in which they should give special consideration to endangered materials and empathy to victims of crimes and disasters. In addition to that, privacy is a highly respected matter when coming to media ethics and standards. This privacy mainly looks after the dignity and reputation of the person especially a victim. It is a process in which they try to maintain and protect the respectable figure of any person who went through a crime or disaster by not using their photos for self-benefits and popularity goals. Privacy is central to dignity, and individuality, or personhood (Moore, 2005, p. 356). Basically, Media cooperates with different standards and laws to produce the right work but at the top stay objectivity and truth. Modern journalism is powered by the two standards of truth and objectivity. By the early 1900s, journalism textbooks, associations and codes of ethics cited truth and objectivity as fundamental principles of the emerging profession (Ward, 2008, p. 71).
In the examples that will be discussed, standards and ethics of media and photojournalism were actually manipulated and those examples and photos turned to be the most iconic photos that passed in the whole era of photojournalism. Starting with the photo that was taken in Sudan by Kevin Carter (The Girl and the Vulture), Carter manipulated the concept of special consideration and empathy to victims of crimes and disasters. Although by his photo, Carter viewed the tragedy found in Sudan, but this could have been done by plenty other ways. At that time Sudan was full of starving people, but Carter chose appealing to the emotions of his audience in a perfect tragic way. He chose a position and a frame other photographers won’t have the chance to get, waited 20 minutes and shot the picture rather than helping. In such cases the purpose of a photographer is his own benefit and career over humanity and empathy. As mentioned in the previous standards, using people as objects in media for the sake of our own project isn’t accepted. Actually, Carter claimed that he helped the girl at the end, but that wasn’t the truth and according to New York Times the girl helped herself to the feeding station for the journalists were warned not to touch people there!
In both the second and the third example that were taken at Vietnam War, photographers or the content of the pictures were used in the sake of propaganda and misleading news. In the photo that was taken by Eddie Adams regarding General Loan killing the Viet Cong suspect Van Lem, Loan was viewed as a cruel, harsh and sadist person were actually the story is different than how it’s presented it the photo. The photo shows only one side of the story. At that day Van Lem killed about 30 person of the Vietnamese army including their families and children. Vietnamese army were chasing him since months and his fate was already known: execution. The man being shot in the “Saigon Execution” photo was Nguyễn Văn Lém, also known as Captain Bay Lop, and he was exactly the kind of enemy fighter that Loan’s men were looking for (Stockton, 2017). On the morning of the “Saigon Execution” photo, Lém’s death squad had just killed 34 people — seven police officers, two or three Americans, and several police officers’ family members, all bound at the wrists and shot in the head over a pit — and they may have been looking for Loan himself (Stockton, 2017). Oppositely, the photo that was taken by Adams showed a whole different picture which was used by Americans and opponents to show the cruelty and the terrorism of the Vietnamese army. In addition to the fact that the photo manipulated objectivity and truth it also harmed the reputation of the General and his family for years.
The third picture of the Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc that was taken by Nick Ut doesn’t differ much from the second photo. It also manipulated objectivity and truth in which it was used for the sake of propaganda. In 1972 this photo was used as an evidence of American’s brutality in Vietnam. Actually, at that date Americans had already left Vietnam and pulled their hand out of the whole war. Kim Phuc was photographed, screaming in pain half burned, after a U.S. commander ordered South Vietnamese planes to drop napalm; it was called the Trang Bang. This was the story narrated behind this photo. In Reality, the only forces that were found in that village then were the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Vietnamese Air Force (VAF). At the time of the battle, there were exactly two American servicemen in Tay Ninh Province, one of whom was miles away and another who arrived at Trang Bang as an observer with zero authority over air and ground forces (Stockton, 2017). Nobody, except for the NVA, ever attacked the village and no Americans within radio range had the power to issue such an order (Stockton, 2017). As a result, Trang Bang was a Vietnamese operation. In addition to not being objective and true, the photo manipulated the privacy and person-hood of the girl Kim Phuc in which she was shown as a child in misery, naked and burned.
Through the whole three examples no positive outcomes were presented. Wars and starvation continued, people didn’t wake-up due to these photos since they were from the beginning unclear and not objective or true. In the case of the Sudan little girl, her fate isn’t known and the photographer committed suicide due to the depression he lived after the criticism he got from people regarding the photo. Both parts of the situation got highly harmed and no actions were done because of this photo to change the reality. In the picture of Kim Phuc propaganda played its evil role and the truth was manipulated through the burned body of an innocent victim whose privacy was hacked and manipulated till this day.
Likely, in the case of the picture that showed General Loan killing the suspected killer, objectivity and truth were missed. At the end, it only served propaganda against Vietnamese and harmed the reputation of the General who was in reality serving his own country. After this picture, he wasn’t accepted by many people and was represented as a sadist in society in which the killed person was actually the sadist. Public outcry over the picture led an Australian hospital to refuse him treatment, whereupon he traveled to America to recover (Stockton, 2017). When word got around about who he was, local people, most of whom knew nothing at all about the context for the picture or what kind of person General Loan was, started making trouble for him (Stockton, 2017). Through this picture 2 people were killed, the executed suspect and the General himself!
Conclusion:
If no positive outcome would any get of a certain work, then it should not be done. In order to get a better income especially in situations such as wars and severe disasters, it is preferable to give objective, truthful and ethical work. Photographers always try to appeal to people through harsh and tragic photos of violence especially when it comes to children. They try to use children as objects to reach their goals and appeal to their audience. They are sure in this way they won’t change the misery and the harsh situation, they would only reach popularity. A photojournalist has to show the whole truth without manipulating and using people at the same time and in addition to that they have to save their right of privacy. They could show videos of people talking about their misery by their acceptance. They could show us picture of manipulated nature and houses due to wars. There is many ways to appeal to people than using people themselves and by saving media ethics.
Bibliography
Bersak, D. R. (2006). Ethics in Photojournalism. S.B. Comparative Media Studies & Electrical Engineering/Computer Science.Retrieved from: http://web.mit.edu/drb/Public/PhotoThesis/
Moore, A. D. (2005). Privacay, Property and Power. University of Washington Press, 355–366.Retrived from: https://elearn.lau.edu.lb/bbcswebdav/pid-204858-dt-content-rid-638339_1/courses/JSC_419_11_201810/Privacy_Photography%20and%20the%20Press.pdf
NATIONAL PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION (NPPA). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from: https://nppa.org/code_of_ethics
Stockton, R. (2017). The Story Behind The Iconic “Saigon Execution” Photo. ati.Retrieved from: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/saigon-execution
Stockton, R. (2017). The True Story Behind “Napalm Girl”. ati.Retrieved from: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/kevin-carter
Ward, S. J. (2008). The handbook of Mass Media Ethics-Truth and Objectivity. Routledge Tylor and Francis Group, 71–81.Retrieved from: https://elearn.lau.edu.lb/bbcswebdav/pid-196674-dt-content-rid-608897_1/courses/JSC_419_11_201810/WARD_Objectivity.pdf
WARD, S. J. (2011). Ethics and the Media. Cambridge University Press, 9–51.Retrived from: file:///C:/Users/AGT-CR/Desktop/WARD_What%20is%20ethics_short.pdf
