Archive for category Ethics
Robert Capa and a Perspective on Ethics
Posted by Kevin Moloney in Ethics, History, Uncategorized on July 27, 2009
A few 4X5 'roids left. Monument Valley, Utah, July 23, 2009. © Kevin Moloney, 2009
Every decade for the past half century the debate over the veracity of Capa’s Falling Soldier image from the Spanish Civil War rages anew. It is all over the photojournalism blogosphere and the media this last week. I am a bit disappointed with the 21st-century demonizing of him for what may probably be a setup.
A decade ago I was eager to believe an elderly Spanish woman who claimed the subject was her dead brother, and the background of the image was where he was reported killed in action. It seemed to set the debate to rest and gratified my respect for Capa.
Of course she might have been mistaken, and new research makes a compelling case that she was wrong.
But regardless whether the image is real or not, we need to remember to judge the photo and the photographer in context.
In 1936 photojournalism and its ethics were in their infancy. Capa would not have had the training of modern journalism professors and an extra 70 years of photojournalism ethics on which to hang his work. It is quite believable that he may have set up the photo, among others. Ethics is an evolution and always starts out a bit feral before civilization is reached.
As late as the 1950s the vast majority of news photos, in the average paper, were completely set up. Fortunately for us and for history we have forgotten most of that work. And even in the early 21st century, many TV news images are set up, along with much suspect work on the Internet.
I have no doubt that as Capa matured, his work progressed and his ethics developed, his work stayed quite honest. A photojournalist’s eye on his work could tell immediately that the vast majority of the moments are spontaneous.
So we can’t and shouldn’t demonize him any more than we would W. Eugene Smith who unquestionably fused two negatives into one on a famous image of Albert Schwietzer, and used the edge of a negative in another from his Spanish Village story as if it were part of the real-world content. In that same story, using retouching brushes, he chose to change the direction of the gaze of a mourner. In his early Country Doctor story he unquestionably set up the lede photo of the doctor walking through a gate, and the closing image of the tired physician slumped with a cup of coffee after a long day.
In his powerful and mind-changing Minamata work, the most famous image is also set up. Smith chose the time of day to ask Tomoko Uyemura’s mother to bathe her so he could catch the light that so effectively evokes Michelangelo’s Pietà.
By standards of the late 20th century these are grave ethical breaches. Making even more subtle changes now get newspaper photographers fired and some magazine freelancers blacklisted from their clients. But at the time Smith was working these were not uncommon techniques.
We all revere Smith’s ability to tell a story, his amazing eye for form, contrast and content, and the wonderful stories he brought us.
And before we crucify Smith along with Capa, let’s remember this: Judge the photographer in context of time. Were they working today they would hopefully not behave this way. Would they, their colleagues and editors would have justifiable grounds to end their careers. They would have no excuses now. Our ethics have surpassed all this.
We also need to be careful not to throw stones. Seventy years from now our very own techniques may be under fire as falsehoods — excessive dodges and burns, exaggerated saturation and contrast, questionable use of light and flash…
Capa, Smith, and the often-mentioned-this-week Robert Doisneau, were imperfect men of their time, who despite their mistakes contributed hugely to our art, communication perspective and ethics. Collectively they created as many falsehoods among their work as the average daily photojournalist publishes in less than a week. And collectively they created as many honest, powerful and world-changing images in their careers as any Pulitzer-winning staff could hope to in a lifetime.
I judge Capa, Smith and their contemporaries based on their era. I will judge my students and colleagues based on this era.
They all follow us.
Posted by Kevin Moloney in Ethics, Uncategorized on April 20, 2009
Here is a professional truth:
We carry every story, good and bad, with us. It’s the result of the empathy we need to do our journalism job fully. All the good journalists I know feel their stories to the bone despite professional detachment and analytical scrutiny.
Today is the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, the story that has followed me most intensely for a decade. I write this exactly ten years after Eric and Dylan went bowling.
First, perspective.
My career has been filled with wonderful stories. I have been overwhelmed by fascination and joy, happiness and friendship. My life has been changed for the better by most of my subjects. The good has outnumbered the bad by tenfold.
I have also seen horrors beyond Columbine. I’ve tiptoed around the bodies left by drug gangs and corrupt cops in Rio, looked into the eyes of sudden widow in India, and faced the grief of the family members of the Oklahoma City bombing. I’ve listened quietly to people tell me of personal losses and fears, and I have seen the aftermath of scores of fatal crashes and deadly fires.
That’s the job.
And though we feel all these things, you would have to add up the background pain of a hundred journalists to equal that of any of the victims of an act as senseless and violent as Columbine.
Not long after the event my colleagues at the university wisely took the opportunity to discuss stress and trauma issues among journalists. It’s a valuable discussion. But at the time it smacked of too much self pity to me. By comparison to our subjects, I felt, our pain was trivial. But trivial as it may be, I now look back on how that story changed me. I have yet more empathy for the victims in any story.
For them multiply what I experience by 100.
Or 1,000.
I felt the first blow of the story days after photographing the tortured faces of terrified parents and shell-shocked students. On my way out of a big public memorial service the weekend after the shooting I came across the first paramedic team on the scene. The small group stood under an umbrella at the back of the huge crowd — not in a place of honor as I would have hoped. There gazing blankly at the space above the stage were the men and women who held the dead, dying and injured.
Dr. Chris Colwell, center, the emergency physician who tended to the wounded and dying at Columbine High School immediately following last Tuesday's shootings, stares blankly beside paramedics as the names of the thirteen victims killed in the shootings are read at a memorial service in Littleton, Colo., Sunday, April 25, 1999. The victims were eulogized by Vice President Gore, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, and the Rev. Franklin Graham.
I snapped two poorly composed frames, crumpled to my knees and sobbed for five minutes. I gathered my wits and went off to develop film and send my images to New York.
I am sure that catharsis helped me get through the next months of covering the story again and again, listening to the harrowing details from survivors and steeling myself to the growing hostility from the larger community.
That hostility is another difference from all the other stories I’ve covered. Our heavy presence, rush to deadlines and competitive streaks left a foul taste in the mouths of anyone who watched it happen. Within days the surrounding community, which had no connection to the story beyond proximity, let its discomfort with our process be known.
In a few cases we deserved it. Our behavior was terrible in spots, and all it takes is one nasty action to create a rumor, a stereotype, an expectation. But all the good and sensitive journalistic behavior I saw was trumped by the bad.
Not only was this story tough in subject matter, but we had a very tense relationship with the subjects.
All these emotions well up in me at every subsequent Columbine stop — the funerals, the shot-up school tours, the exhibition of the weapons, the ticking anniversaries. It caught me this year as I heard the father of victim Rachel Scott speak about his daughter.
The reactions vary, from a jaw clenched to soreness, to sleepless nights like last night. But my expectations of subjects have also changed.
In August 2007 I was in Price, Utah, to cover the ongoing tragedy of the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine. My jaw clenches now whenever I imagine covering a community struck by tragedy. I wrongly anticipate excessive resistance if not outright hostility.
I walked out of my motel room on the first morning I was on the story to find a new tire flat. I looked around it and found no nails, no holes. Rather than my assumption being that a seal or a valve had broken, I instantly jumped to the completely irrational conclusion that someone in town had taken it upon themselves to go empty a few tires in the lot of one of the journalist motels.
I was, of course, wrong. And, despite losing nine local miners and rescue workers, the community was no more difficult to interact with than any other.
Over all the other tragedies I’ve seen, perhaps it is because Columbine was so senseless and unexpected that it has stayed with me. Drug wars in Rio and untimely death in India can unfortunately be expected. Crashes and fires happen every day. In 1999 a school shooting in an affluent suburb with such a toll of dead and injured was not expected. Unfortunately now stories like that are just another part of the tragedy landscape.
Again, all of this reaction is trivial by comparison to the victims, or to those who have seen mountains of tragedy.
To see and hear the tales of journalists really haunted by what they have covered, watch in “Dying to Tell the Story” Don McCullin’s thousand-yard stare as he describes his war-dead subjects climbing out of his film filing cabinets at night and walking the halls of his English country home.
Or listen to Paul Watson in an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross describe his inner conversations with Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland, the dead man he photographed being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
My point is not to show obsession with my reactions to one story. It is to make clear that no matter what stories we cover, we carry them with us forever after.
Picking Battles
Posted by Kevin Moloney in Ethics, Internet, Professionalism, Uncategorized on April 13, 2009
Late last week a story from the U.K. revealed a point where photojournalism balances between public service, free speech, national security and intense journalism competition.
Robert Quick, the U.K.’s most powerful counter-terrorism officer, resigned after being photographed as he stepped from a car at 10 Downing Street, holding secret documents in plain sight.
Click above for NYT story… (Steve Back/European Pressphoto Agency)
Quick was holding plans for a major anti-terrorism operation. With high-resolution digital cameras, good lenses and quick shutters it was possible to zoom into the tiny print and read the document. Britain’s tabloids ran with the information.
My first reaction was dismay at their choice. Though it happened in public, and yes, Quick was a fool for not putting the papers back in their folder, revealing the plans could needlessly cost lives. Terrorists could escape to bomb a market or subway, all thanks to press freedom.
With every freedom comes responsibility. We in the press must understand what the results of revealing information may be.
But, like all stories, the complexities are thick.
First, in a competitive field, someone was bound to publish the information and perhaps the British press felt their hand was forced. Editors have always felt the need to be first and strongest with the news, even before circulations began to wane and competition for ad sales soared. And “citizen journalism” means photos and videos by people without training and without editors land immediately on the Web. The editors of these papers (some combative tabloids, some not) may have felt they had no choice.
The Evening Standard did inform the Metropolitan Police in advance that they would publish. The revelations forced British police to immediately undertake the operation, resulting in 12 arrests. The anti-terrorism plan was not completely thwarted.
Another complication is the relationship between the press and the Metropolitan Police Service in London, which is under fire for the apparent riot-police-clubbing of a 47-year-old newspaper vendor who died of a heart attack after his reported violent encounter with a riot cop. The department seems to be skirting a proper investigation of that death. They are also implicated in the shooting death of a turnstile-hopping Brazilian immigrant in the London subways in 2005.
The public and the press may have been gunning for Quick.
Relationships between journalists and the governments they hope to keep in check are always strained. Here this was with Bush and will be with Obama. But both sides could stand to watch themselves.
If the British media and their citizen counterparts were seizing an opportunity to take down an official they found to be in their way, they succeeded. But will it help their relations with the Metropolitan Police Service? Force better internal investigations? Check the behavior of trigger- and baton-happy cops?
Odds are low. My bet is that police tape and photo positions will move further back away from subjects, access will become more limited. And rather than officials seeing the truth that Quick was an idiot for stepping into public unprepared, they will simply blame the press for Quick’s quick end.
Rather than taking down Robert Quick by revealing a flub that was only possible because of the cameras present, he would have been better forced into resignation by revealing department wrongdoing. We are a better check on the system when we “gotcha” with meaningful material.
We need to pick our battles very carefully.
Perfesser Kev 