Feral Beast: Digital tampering- altering images

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Digital tampering- altering images

Photographic evidence may not always be worth the proverbial thousand words, but it carries alot of clout in the publishing world. (In the digital age, regulations may soon ensure that only original unenhanced images from a memory card be allowed in a courtroom.) Lately, bloggers have put themselves increasingly on Photoshop abuse alert to play gotcha with news photgraphers who might be tempted to doctor photos. This temptation certainly is easier to carry out with new technology, but enhancing photos, airbrushing, or cropping is almost as old as journalism. Check out this website, which shows a history of photo manipulation, starting with Civil War- era pix of Abraham Lincoln which put his famous craggy face on a decidedly buffer body. They have developed a range of tools to detect darkroom/ computer hocus pocus. It's very useful for editors to review these warning signs. (That infamous altered image of Honest Abe is shown above.)

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.