As a member of both sportsshooter.com and aphotoaday.org, I recently have been witness to an endless amount of conversation, debate, support and anger directed towards the actions of one Omar Vega. Now I don’t want to get into what Omar did or did not do, that it is not the point of this (but if you’re interested in young Mr. Vega, a quick Google search will give you an afternoon worth of words). Instead, I want to write about the broader topic of ethics as it pertains to photojournalism.
As a disclaimer, I am not an expert on ethics. All I know is based on my 17-year career in newspapers and what I have seen personally. It’s tough to debate the ethics of a certain photographer if you weren’t there. This is why I don’t want to delve into any specific situations. Each case is different. The perceived crimes of Brian Walski, Patrick Schneider, Omar Vega and half of the National Geographic photographers, if you believe some people, all reside in different realms of ethical behavior. Some have no problem with the accused and their actions, while others think that the aforementioned are just a few of the many who bend the rules.
What is unethical, anyways? Why is opening a window blind to add light to a situation a wrong while using a strobe to add illumination a right? Why is asking someone to redo a previous action a cardinal sin but asking that person to continue to do what he already is doing perceived as acceptable? Why is documenting drug use OK while documenting robbery not OK? I could go on but I think you get the point. It’s a slippery slope out there in the real world. It would be much easier if we all were given a list of dos and don’ts at the beginning of our careers, but what is acceptable is always changing.
Another mitigating factor is that everyone has a different set of ethics. Depending on when and where you grew up, what type of education you‘ve received, who were your influences, what your parents taught you, etc. But those are your own personal standards. As for professional standards, those vary too. Some newspapers create a climate where photographers are directed to set-up photos or assemble false realities to match an editor’s pre-visualization. Where I work at the Chicago Tribune, each employee is required to sign an ethics agreement that outlines exactly what is expected. We regularly hold staff meetings where ethics is at the top of the agenda. But does that mean that every Tribune photographer is ethical? No. The Tribune and, I would hazard to guess, almost every newspaper has at least one photographer who has behaved unethically.
Confusing? Yes, it is. So, what is one to do? I say, be true to yourself and be true to your readers. Be a citizen first and a journalist second. All it takes is one slip-up to tarnish a career worth of honesty. Over the recent years, the journalism industry has lost a ton of credibility and I have talked to more than one person who believes that all the images we make are fakes. The idea is out there that photojournalists are creating an endless succession of Photoshop manipulated pieces of deception. All we can do is show people, one by one if need be, that we seek the truth and we seek to capture that truth in the most honest way possible. So what is unethical? Simply, unethical behavior, in my book, is purposely trying to pass off a deception or misrepresentation of the truth as truth. Simple as that.
