Thursday, February 12, 2009

SPJ and Ethics

I floated around the SPJ website for some ideas on ethical issues today and found and article written in October of 2008. Since we analyzed photos and their ethics on Tuesday I thought this blurb would suffice. The article stated:

Photo manipulation. After the shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, news organizations, including People magazine and The New York Post, may have thought they were doing the right thing by altering photos that appeared to show a wounded student’s genitals. They weren’t. The image organizations edited out was actually a tourniquet. Photographs should be respected as a form of truth. “Never distort the content of news photos or video,” the code instructs. “Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible.”

I think on careful examination and inquiry certain media would be able to discover the actuality of the contents of the photo. I think people become lazy and with a click of a button can "fix" images. If the Post and People put forth some effort they would have known the facts and avoided breaking an ethical code.

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