LR Tips Is Photoshop Killing Photojournalism?

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In an age of photo doctoring and other technology-driven turmoil, the photographic agency Black Star has released a free e-book to help photojournalists and students sort through "what's right and wrong today.”read more



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[Peano]

Technology is a means to an end. It serves equally wall to inform or to deceive. Photoshop isn't killing photojournalism -- no more than word processors and mini-cams are killing journalism. Dishonest journalists are killing their own profession. The fault isn't in their technology. It is in their character.

 

[Parka]

Photoshop cannot save a picture that doesn't tell the story in the first place.

 

[changster]

Photoshop cannot save a picture that doesn't tell the story in the first place.

I think the issue is not about whether Photoshop can save a bad photo or not in the storytelling sense. Rather, it is the manipulation of photos (additions/removal of elements) that leads to either a biased perspective reflecting that of the image-maker or improving the aesthetics (add drama, fix composition, altering colours) that were not present at the point of the picture being captured.

You can see examples of such on http://www.snappedshot.com/, a website dedicated to exposing dishonest journalism. it is also quite a humourous read.

the black star agency recently published an e-book on photojournalism ethics in this age. click here to download.

 

[Deming86]

Well, in in the end its just a tool. To bend it beyond reasonable reality is 'bad', but then again, they have to worry about their target audiences. To them, they're just delivering what the audience wants to see and talk about.

 

[hongsien]

Manipulation of images has been done long before Photoshop was there, there are examples of Mussolini's period as well as in the US and Chinese (propaganda) media, some were more like delivering a message and had not much journalistic value, abit like an 'ad'
for political reasons

But photoshop has certainly made it easier to manipulate the image......

HS

 

[theRBK]

in any case, journalist reports, whether images or writings or video, should always be taken with a grain of salt...

in writing, it is even more easy to falsify or exergerate... after all, its just a bunch of words...

and even without manipulating images or video with software, it is certainly possible to only show what they want to show and hide that which they do not... its called editorialising...

people like to focus on photoshopping only because people can show the "before" and "after" images...

 

[grantyale]

Are knives killing people?
Sure and Not!