Recently a video aired on the internet depicting two Reuters photojournalists being murdered by American troops in an Apache helicopter. The two journalists were among a group of insurgents when they were fired upon, Chmagh was killed instantly along with the group of insurgents. Noor-Eldeen was not so lucky. As he tried to crawl away from the scene, the Apache circled around, waiting for him to reach for a weapon. When a minivan arrived to carry him away to safety, the helicopter fired again, killing Namir and the people trying to help him, including two children. Bradley assault vehicles rolled onto the scene shortly afterward, running over bodies of the dead and laughing over the radio. Unfortunately for the military the video of the entire encounter was leaked on the internet along with the radio transmissions during the battle. The American military has embarrassed themselves greatly and still got off scott free, claiming they followed the rules of engagement. One of the journalists was said to have an RPG, when in reality had a camera.
I’m not here to point fingers or blame anyone. They were with insurgents, they were not wearing vests and the signed up to cover a war zone, but they at least deserve to be recognized for their service to Reuters and to mankind. These two men faced their own mortality every day to bring news to the world of what was happening in the Middle East and this post is dedicated to them and their families.
Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh
Here is a link to Namir Noor-Eldeen’s Photos: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/remembering-namir-noor-eldeen/
Desensitization is defined as a psychological process that has often been involved in explaining viewers’ emotional reactions to media violence. Research on emotional reactions to violent messages has been concerned with the possibility that continued exposure to violence in the mass media will result in desensitization, that is, that exposure to media violence will undermine feelings of concern, empathy, or sympathy that viewers might have toward victims of actual violence.
Now the question I pose is: how much blame should be put on photography and videography in the media in regards to desensitizing human beings to war?
Since 2003, there has been a lot of talk about how the Bush administration screwed up the conflict in the Middle East (Not necessarily just the war, but most endeavors that they undertook) and once the shock of 9/11 ended, the media was happy to document all the problems that arose from the invasion of Iraq. As I have pointed out in my first blog entry, things have changed since WWII for war correspondents and what they are able to transmit back to the United States. No longer are images with dead soldiers barred from the media and the Internet has been able to show the images and videos that have been banned.
This means that photos of dead American soldiers are making the front pages of newspapers and gracing the pages of national magazines. It’s hard to walk down a city street without seeing a newspaper stand or rack with photos of blown up buses and piles of dead bodies on the front pages of publications. These images are the culprits of desensitization in American culture. These images are spurring on wars, even if they are trying to stay unbiased, by desensitizing us to the realities of war. Of course some people will argue that by showing the world the realities of war, the media is combating violence by showing people that war is an atrocious thing and this is a valid point, but in my opinion, people are just learning to accept it rather than learn from it.
Look at World War II, where and entire American nation united to help win a war. Those people back then were unaware of the way war was fought, and even misinformed about Nazi tactics and crimes against humanity. Since then there have been many conflicts that the United States has been involved in and media has evolved along with it. With media covering wars more carefully and honestly, people have become more informed, but have also become more accepting of wars and conflict around the world as they see more and more of it. Therefore I thing that yes, photography and videography are largely to blame for the desensitization of the American people. But also, I think that both fields should be commended for digging deep and bringing a more honest view of war to light in America.
Audio version of my last post.
There is a distinct difference between journalism and sensationalism. Paparazzi are a perfect example of abuse of journalistic power. Yes, you work for a magazine, yes you probably have press credentials, but really what do you do that positively affects society?
Journalists have an obligation to the public to inform using unbiased information. It is the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that Americans have the right to free speech and a freedom of the press, and many paparazzi photographers hide behind this. But an American’s rights end when they begin to infringe upon someone else’s rights and that is exactly what the paparazzi do.
Because a celebrity is a public figure, they forfeit their right to privacy. But that is not my problem with celebrity photographers. Paparazzi are giving hardworking photojournalists a bad name.
Recently I read something that blew my mind, a quote from a paparazzi photographer who stated, “Bad paparazzo are giving good paparazzo a bad name.”
In my opinion there is no good paparazzi, they are vultures sitting outside of a celebrities’ home waiting to get some kind of photo that they can go and sell off to the highest bidder, and I can safely assume that journalistic integrity is not on their mind when they are cashing a check from TMZ. A true journalist does not spend their day outside of someone’s house waiting to make that person’s life miserable, a real journalist is someone with a cause hoping to bring about change or bring to light good deeds.
One website that I have found is paprazziuniversity.com site, a website encouraging paparazzi photography. Their homepage has an ad for “Shoot Like a Superstar,” a seminar promoting paparazzi photography. In the ad, a quote caught my eye, it stated, “There is much more to this art, which is a mixture of photographic excellence, journalistic acumen, and the uncanny ability to be at the right place at the right time.” When I saw this, my stomach actually turned. I was so upset by the fact that I was being lumped in with paparazzi.
I can understand being a photographer at Grammy’s just doing assigned work, but standing outside someone’s home or place of business waiting to bombard them with questions and cameras is just an unacceptable way to gather information. It bothers me that people are so accepting of this blemish on the face of journalism and truly wish that society would stop worshiping celebrities to the point that so-called “journalists” stalk them.
Objectivity is a journalist’s main job. It’s an undeniable fact that journalists face the task of bringing emotional stories to light while staying emotionless themselves.
A famous documentarian once said, “I shoot well because 50% of what I shoot comes from my eye and 50% comes from my heart.” This contradicts a photojournalist’s code of ethics if taken at face value, but what it actually means is that when someone cares about their subjects, they will see past face value and most concisely capture the topic at hand. If they are connected emotionally with their subject, they will capture facets of a topic that an outsider could not comprehend.
I personally was faced with a dilemma in the past week while photographing outreach work in downtown Atlanta. During this trip, our group visited Dunbar Elementary and The Boys and Girls Club of Atlanta, taking time to tutor and mentor children ranging from 5-12 years of age.
Arriving in Atlanta, I double checked my equipment and prepared myself for some heavy shooting. After touring Atlanta ghettoes and seeing closed storefront after closed storefront, our first stop was The Boy’s and Girls Club of Atlanta, where we were introduced to the children for the first time.
It didn’t take long for one child to latch onto my finger and even less time to grab my heart. Christian was six years old and attended the Boys and Girls Club in the afternoons while his mother worked in Atlanta. I had never met a person so affectionate and open as Christian and I enjoyed having conversations with him about football and his father, who Christian told me lived “far away, but has a motorcycle.”
After a while I realized I was becoming attached to the kids at the club, but continually reminded myself that it was not my job to make friends, it was to document. So I dethatched myself from the children and moved along, taking one photo after another of children who were uneasy with a new person and even more so of a person with a camera. At that time, I did not understand that when I entered a room, the children began to act unnaturally, changing that vibe of the area completely.
Days two and three, I decided to leave my camera (Locked up, of course) at the hostel and to commit myself to the children and community service. I met more children and became acquainted with the kids on a personal level. I met Emon, Malik, Antonio and Trayneisha, and bonded with each, eating snacks and sharing stories. It was hard to leave these kids, knowing that I was going home to bed and food, while some of them were not.
Day four dawned and I had no idea what lay ahead of me. If someone told me that I would document some of the most touching images of my life, I would have laughed in their faces. But when we arrived to the Club, not one child batted an eye at my camera, or me and I was free to roam, unattached, taking photos any time I liked.
I entered classrooms, game rooms, playgrounds and gymnasiums, where I was ignored and accepted by the children. I photographed children and fellow workers candidly, and some of the best photographs came from sitting up close with the groups of children and using a wide angle lens situated in my lap, working Avedon-style, talking with children and snapping away. Even when I was working, I knew it would be very hard to leave. It turned out to be one of the most difficult things I ever had to do.
Leaving Atlanta, I felt like I was abandoning these children but I was excited to see what my time had yielded. It was then that I realized that if I had not taken the time to get to know my subjects and their stories, my photos would have been forced and superficial. I do not feel like I violated my duties as a journalist, I feel that I had found a way to enter a world that would have gone unknown to me, had I not made the bonds I did.
I would like to find someone who can look at my images and tell me that if I had stayed around the edges and not committed to these children, I could have made stronger and more profound images. You can do so soon if you’d like, when they are posted next Thursday to www.willwrobelphoto.wordpress.com.
The word Photoshop has become a household name worldwide in the past few years and only someone living under a rock wouldn’t know what a digital camera is. But with this new freedom of creativity and image manipulation power comes great responsibility.
The journalism world looks down upon doctoring photos outside of photo illustrations, solely because it detracts from the credibility of the news organization and misleads the public. In today’s fast paced and competitive world of photojournalism, it can be very tempting to doctor a photo to suit your needs and some people can’t keep themselves from breaking that code of ethics.
In 2003, there were two photographers from the Los Angeles Times were fired from their positions when they were caught for printing a manipulated photo. The photo was a composite of two existing photos that both had endearing qualities, so they were combined to make one excellent photo. Unfortunately for those two photographers, they did not check the photo completely and it turned out that there was a person that was duplicated twice into the final image. The editor at the LA Times did not catch the image before it was shared with affiliates at other papers, but an editor with the Hartford Courant caught the mistake. Following an investigation, both photographers were dismissed from their positions. Below is the manipulated photo, the top two photos were combined to create the bottom photo:
Another interesting dilemma that arose from photo manipulation was discussed in a New York Times article from 2006. Scientific journals are now using a program to detect if images have been manipulated to coincide with data in studies. This was the case with fabricated images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk. Here is a quote from that article: “In some instances, he found, authors would remove bands from a gel, a test for showing what proteins are present in an experiment. Sometimes a row of bands would be duplicated and presented as the controls for a second experiment. Sometimes the background would be cleaned up, with Photoshop’s rubber stamp or clone stamp tool, to make it prettier.”
This seems to show that Photoshop is more of a temptation than a help when it comes to journalism. With the capabilities of computers and Photoshop today, it should always linger in the back of one’s mind that they might not being seeing thing that way that they actually occurred. To a photojournalist, using Photoshop is like playing with fire, and eventually you’re going to get burned.
In World War II, the media was the only link between war-torn Europe and the United States. It is hard to imagine today what it would be like to not know firsthand what was going on across the world. The American media was, by acting in what they believed to be a patriotic manner, making the news media propaganda against Hitler and his Nazi regime. The news was reporting that America was winning and selling a mythic war to the American people, telling them that once Hitler was defeated and his government abolished, the world would once again be safe. The media reaching the United States from overseas was tainted by military filters it passed through on the way back home. The same things happened on the German side, the government censored photos and people were kept relatively uninformed.
Photography was no exception to that rule. Neither the American or German governments allowed photos of dead soldiers to be published in newspapers or magazines. Today photos of dead WWII soldiers can be found on the Internet, but they were photos hidden away until after the war. Both Americans and Germans were not allowed to take photos of concentration camps and none were published during the war. A surprising fact though, is that Americans were not allowed to publish photos of liberated concentration camps. The United States did not want to “dishonor the dead” by photographing the camps.
I now come to my main point, which is posed as a question. Can you imagine how hard it has become for a national government to censor photos taken in war zones across the world? What measures would have to be taken and how would the Constitution stand up to censoring the photos taken in over the past few years in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Social media and technology advances have made it near impossible for countries like the United States and the United Kingdom to keep photos from surfacing that depict atrocities against other human beings. The Internet and digital photographs have ruined the secrecy governments once used as propaganda. A professor once told me that there are three ways to control someone: through force, through money and through withholding information. Living in a world with Google.com and Facebook, it is near impossible to withhold enough information to keep an entire country in the dark on an important issue. An excellent example of this is Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2004, a few photos and videos surfaced of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. These pictures, videos and prisoner accounts blew the lid off of a huge scandal. Then, Abu Ghraib was used as a prison facility and interrogation station for the United States Army in Iraq. Stationed at the facility, the 372nd Military Police and assorted federal agencies allegedly tortured, raped, sodomized and murdered Iraqi inmates imprisoned there. Those involved were punished according to their crimes; here is a short description of those charges:
“The United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and March 2006, eleven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively, in trials ending on January 14, 2005 and September 26, 2005.”
Today, those photos and videos are easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and the have been exposed worldwide. Without today’s technology of digital cameras and media networks, there is very little happening on earth that has not been exposed in one way or another. Referring back to World War II, there are some things that have not been exposed yet, 65 years later, solely because there was no technology then that could contradict the government’s wishes of secrecy and circumvent national censorship.
Photos from Abu Ghraib, taken from a Google search:
In future posts I will describe how photography today has changed and what the benefits and downsides photography has on media today, from paparazzi to photo manipulation to the desensitization of American citizens to violent images.