Respond to the following prompt: "In the New York Times article, the author writes: 'Indeed a manipulated image, which is often more powerful than the sum of its parts, can affect not just visual perception but opinions as well.' What specific power do photos have to tell the truth, and how should photojournalists and news editors respect this power? What specific guidelines should photojournalists and news editors take to limit image manipulations, posed events, and other types of fakery? What counts as manipulation and what counts as reasonable editing, cropping or enhancement?
A very common and useful technique employed by photographers and photo-journalists is editing photos and merging certain aspects of two photos to create a completely different product. It is fair to suggest that all news agencies and magazines in some way edit their photos, either enhancing the image or manipulating it to serve their editorial goals. However for an audience that doesn't understand photo manipulation, digital enhancement, and cropping it is very difficult to establish or even differentiate between a fake photo and a real one. This is an increasing problem for people who want accurate and unaltered information from their media sources. One example of this was established in class when we closely examined the John Kerry - Jane Fonda photo. Many news viewers were infuriated by what they thought was an authentic photograph of Kerry and Fonda at an anti-war rally. That image and others like it caused people to become outraged and to question Kerry as a political candidate. This situation became the epitome of the ramifications of digital photo manipulation. A person's reputation was denigrated and damaged by a circulated photo of unknown origin orchestrated by an anonymous author.
Various institutions and the public realize that this increasing problem calls for a unique way to identify and tag photos so their authenticity may be verified and their owner be contacted. In class we examined the possible use of watermarking, a tool which will allow us to verify the photographer and the copy-write owner in case of any problems. The viability of watermarking and digital identification is certainly an option that must be considered. This solution would allow agencies that broadcast these photos to verify their authenticity and force them to recognize the copy-write issues surrounding its use. In addition to this we discussed several limitations which could be imposed on journalists to curb the amount of manipulated, forged, and altered photographs circulating the web. We came to the conclusion that in some cases it is necessary for the editor to enhance the image for better clarity, contrast, lighting so that it can be viewed by the audience however to manipulate the image in any way beyond what was mentioned would be altering the image completely. Nevertheless even image enhancement has been abused in the past; such was evident with Time's mug-shot photo of O.J Simpson. The only way to ensure the authenticity and validity of images is to completely block any attempt to change the image, however this would be detrimental to images with poor lighting and insufficient contrast. I conclude that there is no 'safe' way to ensure that images wont be altered and therefore we need to become more astute and objective towards photographs and agencies which try to pass on fraudulent images.
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