The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

Editorial: Aftermath of an ethical mess

Photo Manipulation || Matt Matteucci

Journalists working in countries with free presses generally adhere to a strict code of ethics. Democracy depends on the media, the so-called Fourth Estate, to keep citizens properly informed with fair reporting of the country’s current events.

In a time when people love to fantasize that media are controlled by some higher political and greedy power and a time when readers are flooded with information via the web, it is critical that reputable media outlets protect their integrity by strictly following a code of ethics that every professional journalist has committed to memory.

The Sacramento Bee recently fired a longtime photographer and former City College student for digitally manipulating a photo that ran on the front page of a Sunday issue of The Bee. Photographer Bryan Patrick won numerous photography awards while working for two local newspapers, and his inappropriate manipulation of a stunning photo of an egret resulted in ruining his career, according to City College Photography Professor Randy Allen.

“It’s a lot like being a bank teller and embezzling. It’s not like he’ll ever get another job as a press photographer—he just won’t. [Employers] don’t hire people who have been caught doing this kind of thing,” said Allen. “When I give this [ethics] talk in my photojournalism class, I use four or five examples [of digitally manipulated photographs], and in every example the person is no longer working as a journalist.”
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According to the National Press Photographers Association, even the slightest digital manipulation, other than basic cropping, of a press photo is considered dishonest and misleading to an audience.

On its website NPAA declares that press photography “can reveal great truths, expose wrongdoing and neglect, inspire hope and understanding and connect people around the globe through the language of visual understanding. Photographs can also cause great harm if they are callously intrusive or are manipulated.”

Fair, honest and unbiased reporting is expected of any reputable journalist, whether they are writers or photographers. Dishonesty and misrepresentation tarnishes the public’s trust in media, which is why respectable media sources must be diligent and honest. Journalists must hone their skills so that small but lethal alterations are unnecessary. They must uphold the highest standards because the future of journalism, a profession on which a democratic nation depends, must maintain trust with its audience.

Journalists who deceive their audiences jeopardize the reputation of all journalists and the entirety of the profession.

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