President Barak Obama stood alone on a Gulf Coast beach, hearing only the waves and his own inner voice. The solitary scene just reinforced his isolation as the expanding oil slick threatens to overwhelm his connection with coastal residents and recovery managers….
If an old aphorism is true, I am owed 957 more words to complete the phony analysis I began in the preceding paragraph - phony, because the picture I’m describing is itself a fraud.
Reproduced above is the cover of June 19th issue of The Economist, based on a May 28th photo by Reuters journalist Larry Downing. I say "based," because what The Economist printed is not the image Downing recorded.
The Economist is a blue-blooded British weekly aimed at a Brahman caste of international executives and policy makers, with unsigned articles of a rather pedantic tone. On the whole, The Economist might be considered somewhat witty. But on the 19th of last month they were too clever for their own good, and ours.
In Downing’s original shot, Obama is not only not alone, he is actively engaged in a conversation with coastal resident Charlotte Randolph as U.S.C.G. Admiral Thad Allen listens. But Randolph and Allen, not instantly recognizable and in postures nowhere near as dramatic as Obama’s, had to go.
The photographic trickery was exposed Monday by Jeremy Peters of The New York Times. According to Peters, Economist Deputy Editor Emma Duncan offered this rationale:
“I was editing the paper* the week we ran the image of President Obama with the oil rig in the background. Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.
“We often edit the photos we use on our covers, for one of two reasons. Sometimes — as with a cover we ran on March 27 on U.S. health care, with Mr. Obama with a bandage round his head — it’s an obvious joke. Sometimes — as with an image of President Chavez on May 15 on which we darkened the background, or with our ‘It’s time’ cover endorsing Mr. Obama, from which the background was removed altogether — it is to bring out the central character. We don’t edit photos in order to mislead.
“I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. ‘The damage beyond the spill’ referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.”
[*Though The Economist is a glossy magazine, its publishers refer to it as a newspaper.]
Just to be perfectly clear, the news service photographer had no part in the photograph’s alteration; in fact, it would be against Reuters policy to make such a change without management approval and the consent of the subjects. The Economist's Emma Duncan is the one who made the call.
Her call was fundamentally dishonest, intellectually and journalistically, and her explanation seems, well…thin. Her editorial standards are apparently humor (“…an obvious joke.”) and emphasis (“…bring out the central character.”), but during a long career in journalism I have had it emphasized to me, as I’ve emphasized to others, that there’s nothing funny about misrepresenting reality. That applies especially to visual media, where only half of the graphic’s intended message is under editorial control; it is the viewer, a creature with sometimes quirky predispositions, whose personal context completes the interpretive experience. No two people would write the same thousand words.
There is no denying that we live in a Photoshop age. A moderately astute adolescent with a couple hundred bucks can manipulate images in ways unavailable to the CIA less than a generation ago. There’s no dishonesty in doing so in the name of art or entertainment. Just don’t do it and call the image news.
I remember an interview with film director James Cameron several years ago in which he was commenting on advances in digital graphic technology. He was, he told the interviewer, sincerely worried about the future of our democracy. The power to completely rearrange elements within the frame long after the image is recorded left him wondering whether voters could ever trust their eyes again.
In 2004 there was no doubt in many minds that presidential candidate John Kerry and certified veteran-annoyer Jane Fonda once shared the same antiwar podium. The incontrovertible evidence, a grainy newspaper photo from the early ‘70s, was in fact a modern digital paste-up job using file photos snapped a year apart. A lot of smart people, and an exponentially larger number of the not-so-smart, were completely taken in. It was clear case of technological dishonesty in the service of political slime-mongers. It was James Cameron's nightmare.
In a larger scheme of things, the only apparent harm arising from The Economist cover is to the publication itself. Politically, not enough of the American electorate reads it for the misimpression to have meaningful effect. And while there needs to be a sustained cry for more editorial integrity among the world’s visual media, it’s a sad fact that committed visual propagandists will always have their ways of making the unreal look real, and us look like fools for believing it.
The next time an image – especially one purporting to depict newsworthy or politically sensitive events – amazes, appalls or inspires you, ask yourself: is there any particular person, entity or point of view that stands to gain by your reaction (or a similar reaction from others) and, if so, to what degree? That’s the first step in answering the question, Is it real?
If an old aphorism is true, I am owed 957 more words to complete the phony analysis I began in the preceding paragraph - phony, because the picture I’m describing is itself a fraud.
Reproduced above is the cover of June 19th issue of The Economist, based on a May 28th photo by Reuters journalist Larry Downing. I say "based," because what The Economist printed is not the image Downing recorded.
The Economist is a blue-blooded British weekly aimed at a Brahman caste of international executives and policy makers, with unsigned articles of a rather pedantic tone. On the whole, The Economist might be considered somewhat witty. But on the 19th of last month they were too clever for their own good, and ours.
In Downing’s original shot, Obama is not only not alone, he is actively engaged in a conversation with coastal resident Charlotte Randolph as U.S.C.G. Admiral Thad Allen listens. But Randolph and Allen, not instantly recognizable and in postures nowhere near as dramatic as Obama’s, had to go.
The photographic trickery was exposed Monday by Jeremy Peters of The New York Times. According to Peters, Economist Deputy Editor Emma Duncan offered this rationale:
“I was editing the paper* the week we ran the image of President Obama with the oil rig in the background. Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.
“We often edit the photos we use on our covers, for one of two reasons. Sometimes — as with a cover we ran on March 27 on U.S. health care, with Mr. Obama with a bandage round his head — it’s an obvious joke. Sometimes — as with an image of President Chavez on May 15 on which we darkened the background, or with our ‘It’s time’ cover endorsing Mr. Obama, from which the background was removed altogether — it is to bring out the central character. We don’t edit photos in order to mislead.
“I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. ‘The damage beyond the spill’ referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.”
[*Though The Economist is a glossy magazine, its publishers refer to it as a newspaper.]
Just to be perfectly clear, the news service photographer had no part in the photograph’s alteration; in fact, it would be against Reuters policy to make such a change without management approval and the consent of the subjects. The Economist's Emma Duncan is the one who made the call.
Her call was fundamentally dishonest, intellectually and journalistically, and her explanation seems, well…thin. Her editorial standards are apparently humor (“…an obvious joke.”) and emphasis (“…bring out the central character.”), but during a long career in journalism I have had it emphasized to me, as I’ve emphasized to others, that there’s nothing funny about misrepresenting reality. That applies especially to visual media, where only half of the graphic’s intended message is under editorial control; it is the viewer, a creature with sometimes quirky predispositions, whose personal context completes the interpretive experience. No two people would write the same thousand words.
There is no denying that we live in a Photoshop age. A moderately astute adolescent with a couple hundred bucks can manipulate images in ways unavailable to the CIA less than a generation ago. There’s no dishonesty in doing so in the name of art or entertainment. Just don’t do it and call the image news.
I remember an interview with film director James Cameron several years ago in which he was commenting on advances in digital graphic technology. He was, he told the interviewer, sincerely worried about the future of our democracy. The power to completely rearrange elements within the frame long after the image is recorded left him wondering whether voters could ever trust their eyes again.
In 2004 there was no doubt in many minds that presidential candidate John Kerry and certified veteran-annoyer Jane Fonda once shared the same antiwar podium. The incontrovertible evidence, a grainy newspaper photo from the early ‘70s, was in fact a modern digital paste-up job using file photos snapped a year apart. A lot of smart people, and an exponentially larger number of the not-so-smart, were completely taken in. It was clear case of technological dishonesty in the service of political slime-mongers. It was James Cameron's nightmare.
In a larger scheme of things, the only apparent harm arising from The Economist cover is to the publication itself. Politically, not enough of the American electorate reads it for the misimpression to have meaningful effect. And while there needs to be a sustained cry for more editorial integrity among the world’s visual media, it’s a sad fact that committed visual propagandists will always have their ways of making the unreal look real, and us look like fools for believing it.
The next time an image – especially one purporting to depict newsworthy or politically sensitive events – amazes, appalls or inspires you, ask yourself: is there any particular person, entity or point of view that stands to gain by your reaction (or a similar reaction from others) and, if so, to what degree? That’s the first step in answering the question, Is it real?
No comments:
Post a Comment