Week 12: Photojournalism: The Best of Both Worlds.

It is said that news must be as entertaining as it is truthful. Do you think both can coexist harmoniously in the world of photojournalism?

Week 12, which is the last of week of lecture, is about photojournalism. Can news be entertaining and truthful at the same time in the world of photojournalism? Before answering the question, what is photojournalism? Chapnick (1994) define photojournalism as “a very special breed of photographer who thrives in a challenging, story-telling, sometimes dangerous profession.” It is quiet difficult for news to be entertaining and truthful in the same time as there is a “loop hole” in the ethics of photography.

Gross, Katz and Ruby (2003), states that photojournalist and editor has been “long known full well that all images are manipulated and thus have long engaged in and countenanced a variety of image-altering practice.”  In today world of technology, a photograph could be altered in many ways but in the photojournalism world not all alteration of photographs is acceptable. With this alteration, it will make the news more entertaining and less truthful, but this doesn’t happen all the time. Some alterations are made just to make the photograph clearer, but some of the alterations make the original photograph to look bias and very subjective.

One of the many alterations that makes the news more entertaining and less truthful is which is acceptable in the photojournalism world is adding in important details or the cropping out of very important information. With this alteration, the photo will be no longer truthful; it will change the true picture into a lie.

Another alteration is by giving caption to the photo. This alteration doesn’t involve the picture at all, but it involves with giving meaning to the picture. It is truthful by titling it with the author’s name, or just telling the place of when it was taken and of what, but captioning a photograph makes the audience feel something. This feeling that the audience get from the photograph is sometimes bias and subjective. This is called anchorage. With this power, a photograph that looks so truthful could be view in a different way, thus making it a lie but entertaining.

There are still some in the news industries who use unacceptable manipulations on photograph that isn’t obvious to the audience eyes. With this type of manipulations, it makes the photograph more entertaining and even less truthful. The manipulations are like editing and distortion of main subject of photograph, deceiving the world on how the photograph was made and the use of an application that could significantly change the image.

In conclusion, it is quite difficult for a photograph to be both entertaining and truthful as the news wants it to be more entertaining so that the company will gain more profit and also to create biasness. It is hard to handle the truth of news sometimes and sometime the truthful news are just dull, thus making it more entertaining is the way to go.

Reference List:-

Chapnick, H. (1994). Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism. United States of America: University of Missouri Press.

Gross, L., Katz J. S. & Ruby, J. (2003). Image ethics in the digital age. MN: University of Minnesota Press.