Blog Post 8

 Oh did this chapter scream relevancy at me this week. While doing my reading I came upon the section of the chapter aimed at interviews and how journalists could deceive or trick their audience by using them. At first I chuckled. What a strange point, I had never seen interviews as anything less than standard journalism. How could they have been so incendiary in the past? As if the universe heard me, my question was soon answered, specifically by this interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNK-e6nnFGY

I was floored by the media ethics exhibited in this interview of activist Suey Park by Josh Zepp for Huffington Post. Zepp is questioning Suey on her recent efforts to raise awareness on the #cancelcolbert hastag in response to a racially charged tweet. Zepp manipulates Park into looking emotional and illogical. He frames his questions condescendingly and jeers at her answers, even at one point explicitly calling her opinion “stupid”. Soon the public was on board, calling Park foolish and overly sensitive. Those that get their news specifically from sites like HuffPo and the like took to the Internet to bash Park and I formed another connection with the book. The importance of where we get our news is completely exacerbated by things like this.

Another point that I’ve experience in my everyday life lately is that of citizen journalists. One of my close friends from high school consistently posts his ‘articles’ the he writes for the online magazine Vice. He has yet to graduate from college but touts himself as a journalist writing on the social media injustices of today. His work is published by the company and passed off as newsworthy. While Vice may not be the shining paragon of journalism it is still a pretty high profile company with a solid following. What they publish is taken at face value a majority of the time. What scares me is their recent foray into actual ‘hard hitting news’ with the beginning of a segment called (creatively) Vice News. In my opinion, I find it hard to take the articles and videos posted by Vice News as legitimate when I see people like my 19-year-old, pot head high school classmates also legally associated with them as well.

Don’t get me wrong I think citizen journalism can be an incredibly important and valuable tool to society but it straddles a dangerous line. Those that follow news sources that utilize it have to worry about things like story legitimacy (dealing with sourcing issues as mentioned in the reading) as well as things like the ethics and what should be the “objectivity” behind it. Without following several legitimate news sources that follow traditional journalism tenets and employ traditionally trained journalists, the public risks losing touch with what is really going on.

Blog Post 7

This weeks reading hit especially close to home for me. I've studied photography for over 8 years so the ethics of photography as a tool of reporting have been hammered into my head. I was extremely interested in the pictures and individual cases that were going to accompany the chapter. 

One of the most powerful for me was the case focusing on Marinovich in Soweto. I had seen both pictures before in different online chat rooms but never truly knew the story. It brought me back to one of the very first classes we had in which we all discussed the role of ethics in deciding to publish certain pictures. In my opinion I would've published these photos. They may ruin someone’s breakfast but they are the truth and paint a somber picture that I think the public should've known. As we discussed in class, perhaps it may be more tactful to put the picture on a page a bit farther from the front but they should still be showcased. I feel like too much of the U.S. population didn't find the war in Iraq and Afghanistan relevant to them because they felt extremely disconnected form it. This disjointedness comes from the paucity of real time coverage (especially images) that truly demonstrates the atrocities abroad.

I think something about the Soweto case that stuck out to me specifically, was the discussion of the ethics of the photographer. A lot of the time focus is placed on the editors and their ethics, see: should we publish this or not. Yet the ethics behind the person taking the actual picture are judged as well. I found myself having a bit of a mental conflict in this regard. As a photographer I think if you find something powerful to shoot that makes a once in a lifetime shot, then by all means shoot it. But this isn’t ethically sound, as the book discusses. The question of ‘to shoot or not to shoot’ is one based intensely upon how a certain individuals ethical map looks. As a realist I see no problem shooting something as it’s happening but many might argue this as wrong. I think back to an extremely startling photo I saw a couple of months ago. A man lay on the ground, hands bound with hundreds of knives sticking out of him, the gore was off the Richter. It was one of the most powerful photos I’d ever seen. I immediately researched its origins. Apparently the man stabbed was a rapist abroad, killed after the entire village decided to take action against him. The photo is jarring but an interesting statement.

There was a lot of criticism towards the photographer for taking pictures in place of helping the man being stabbed, but how much can he be expected to do? If he had intervened might he also become a victim? That’s not to say if you can stop something that you shouldn’t but it seems as if in this situation that might be more dangerous than staying out of it. I also think ethically it’s impossible to hold all photographers to the same standard. Perhaps I’m biased but conclusively I feel the editors should shoulder more of the responsibility in these situations. Running the picture to thousands of readers is a lot different than taking one in the heat of the moment.