Yes, I do "self-censor". My criteria would be an evaluation of the effect in suffering my work may/ would cause. As an example, I was present at the scene of a horrible automobile accident, where a teen age boy and his girl friend were both killed as a result of his Camaro leaving the road and running into the front of a local restaurant. On impact, the vehicle split open and distributed *many* empty beer cans over a section of the road.
A dramatic, telling image...
Empty beer cans - and blood.
There was a local Firefighter, in full gear, sitting next to this pile of destruction, crying like a baby, a result of the frustration he must have felt in failing to save either - the terrible moment when an EMT realizes that, with all of the training, their best efforts, the work of heroes, ... the end of life is sometimes not the decision of mortals.
It would have been a remarkable image. I did not take it. I realized hat the additional pain that would have been caused by the establishment/ reinforcing of that image and its memory would have been far greater than anything I COULD be part of, in good conscience.
"Shirking my duty as a Journalist?" Not in my book. More like abiding by may own personal code of conduct and humanity.
I was not the only photographer on that scene, and not the only one to NOT photograph. No one else did, either.
I can see what you're saying, Suzanne. However, I don't think showing the realities of an atrocity is the same as, say showing Diana and Dodi Fayed in the back of the car immediately after the accident. The purpose of showing each is completely different. I don't think squeamishness is good, but that doesn't mean that everything always needs to be shown in graphic detail (if only because that results in peoples' senses becoming dulled).
I've never worked on a newspaper or had anything to do with picture-editing. So can only comment as someone who looks at pictures - a great deal, like any member of the public. Sometimes it's easy for editors, I think, to have a particular view on what the public wants or needs to see. It's inevitable they don't always get it right.
I'm not sure about the picture in the OP - my feeling is that what takes interest away a little is the people standing up to the left and looking away - that takes away from the drama and intensity a little for me. I don't think having the face or body of the person on the stretcher would make any difference - but a crop in of the right group of emergency workers, especially with the drip held up, would focus attention. I think it's interesting not having more of the person on the stretcher...
I guess for any picture, there's no 'answer', but I do think sometimes the general public are patronised by the newspaper world, and the information given in pictures is too often spelt out to a degree that is not necessary, and the 'story-telling' is overdone, or goes too far.
If you spent all day worrying about everyone's feelings we'd have no press, and they do play a vital role.
If you could have gotten all of that in a photograph, you could have won a Pulitzer.
Would not be worth it. Not even close.
It WOULD have been "unethical" to add to the agony and misery at that scene... reinforcing the image of what must have happened, in effect recreating the image Firefighter who ultimately "lost it'.
I had a choice; "Pulitzer" or my status as a human being. I chose "human being".
it's perfectly acceptable to publish an image of some skeletal African baby a day or two from death and yet it is NOT acceptable to publish a picture of a couple of middleclass kids who, due to an overdose of booze or drugs, manage to splatter themselves across the landscape?....the hypocrisy is palpable.
self censorship is NOT equitable with a personal ethic or moral responsibility.
hypocrisy is a crime. end of story.
wayne
...
it's perfectly acceptable to publish an image of some skeletal African baby a day or two from death and yet it is NOT acceptable to publish a picture of a couple of middleclass kids who, due to an overdose of booze or drugs, manage to splatter themselves across the landscape?....the hypocrisy is palpable.
... self censorship is NOT equitable with a personal ethic or moral responsibility.
... actually it's the very opposite, it's a fundamental compromise in my opinion, a bit like allowing yourself to be 'embedded' or accepting direct payment from any govt dept.,utility,public relations section (private or public), etc, etc. Honourable employment? of course it is. Moral, ethical, 'uncensored'? yeah, well....that's up to you to decide.
... hypocrisy is a crime. end of story.
I really do think there's a difference between photographs from Darfur and the middle class kids. Darfur photographs are intended to highlight a purposeful injustice perpetrated on the weak in the hopes of ending that horror. Parents, faced with horrific images of their dead kids will only be dealt more agony - without benefit.
I would also say that self-censorship is absolutely equitable with a personal ethic and moral responsibility. Unless, that is, we wish to "standardize" personal ethics - and I have some very real fears of those who would wish to dictate personal ethics on my behalf.
Hypocrisy too is a very much personal take. When one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, perhaps one man's hypocrisy is another's personal ethic.
I guess no-one is right. We all think we are the norm from which other people differ - but the norm is, and should be, diversity.
Bob H
Using the Darfur pictures in Darfur poses the same ethical problem as the use of the pictures of the middle class kids does in their home area.
...Every year in the USA tobacco kills off as many people as the genocide in Darfur has killed off total. Every ten to 15 years automobile accidents do the same thing. These are issues on the same scale as Darfur, they just happen to be in our back yard.
What about plain old good taste, as in the good taste not to ask the victim of an accident or perhaps the loss of a loved one "how does that make you feel?"
Ultimately I think it comes down to having decorum, and telling the story that is there without being a scumbag.
The assumption that these "kids" were "middle class" is irritating. There was NO mention of "class" and any sort of stereotyping is unwarranted. Their deaths, wherever they were situated in life was a terrible tragedy... period.
You don't see any difference. I do. Those deaths were permanent - nothing positive - other than some form of shock therapy, generally not very effective - could possibly be the result of that photograph. At any rate - MY choice ... and I would choose the same again, a thousand times!
Children starving in Darfur... Starvation, ongoing genocide ... can be affected by public knowledge of the situation in the future. Possibly a photograph is a weak attempt at a cure, at best ... but as possibly the best that we can do, or that can be done at the moment.
???? The issue of tobacco use ... is to be viewed as the same as the problems in Darfur???
Hi Wayne
Not much to go on there. It would be more constructive if you spelled out what you think the difference is, and why you think it is important to this discussion. Then the other people following this thread can work out where they might be going wrong.
Ian
There is no difference...none whatsoever. You can dress it up in some selfserving sanctimonious cloak of righteousness if you want to, but it is still bloody censorship AFAIAC. Read phillip Knightley's book on the history of war correspondents. it was published about 1975 and is a bit out of date but he makes a compelling case that censorship, both state AND selfimposed, cost millions of lives on the western front and that the force of public opinion (both british and german) would have finished the war years earlier.
And it's the very same moral culpability (tho to a far, far lesser degree of course) that has been shown in the the image that started this thread. The journalist has sanitised the image, he has provided a myriad of possible agendas that may have nothing at all to do with the tragedy depicted, he hasn't provided a complete coverage, in truth he has decided himself what the story will be. his job is to gather facts, truths if you like, NOT to interpret the facts. THAT IS NOT HIS JOB. It's all black and white for me you either believe in censorship or you don't. there is no grey area here.
And it's the very same moral culpability (tho to a far, far lesser degree of course) that has been shown in the the image that started this thread. The journalist has sanitised the image, he has provided a myriad of possible agendas that may have nothing at all to do with the tragedy depicted, he hasn't provided a complete coverage, in truth he has decided himself what the story will be. his job is to gather facts, truths if you like, NOT to interpret the facts. THAT IS NOT HIS JOB. It's all black and white for me you either believe in censorship or you don't. there is no grey area here.
IAnd if you don't think that war correspondents such as Don McCullin and James Natchwey have ever decided, at certain moments, not to press the shutter, then I suggest you look a little further at their writings.
There is no difference...none whatsoever. You can dress it up in some selfserving sanctimonious cloak of righteousness if you want to, but it is still bloody censorship AFAIAC. Read phillip Knightley's book on the history of war correspondents. it was published about 1975 and is a bit out of date but he makes a compelling case that censorship, both state AND selfimposed, cost millions of lives on the western front and that the force of public opinion (both british and german) would have finished the war years earlier.
And it's the very same moral culpability (tho to a far, far lesser degree of course) that has been shown in the the image that started this thread. The journalist has sanitised the image, he has provided a myriad of possible agendas that may have nothing at all to do with the tragedy depicted, he hasn't provided a complete coverage, in truth he has decided himself what the story will be. his job is to gather facts, truths if you like, NOT to interpret the facts. THAT IS NOT HIS JOB. It's all black and white for me you either believe in censorship or you don't. there is no grey area here.
.....
I think the use of 'self-censorship' over this question, though, is a bit laden - what about 'sense of judgment'...or even, at times 'common sense'....
Thanks Wayne. Your position is now much clearer. So, once given a story to cover, a news journalist's job is to gather all the relevant 'facts' he can about that story. If the journalist consciously exercises any discretion at all in deciding to exclude certain information from his photographs, that is the same as censorship and should be condemned. Is it possible that a good news journalist could feel sufficiently uncomfortable about presenting complete coverage of a particular story that he/she would refuse to do it? Or would such a person by definition be inherently unsuited to being a news journalist, no matter what the story he/she found uncomfortable was about? Is there any distinction between what a paparazzo does and what a good news journalist does, in terms of coverage of a particular event? I am not trying to start a fight - just interested.
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