A major argument among photojournalists and other professionals in the journalism field is one of ethics, right versus wrong, and personal value: Should a photographer intervene in a story by helping someone in need when their job is to simply observe? Any one person or circumstance cannot answer this question. Each person must evaluate their own personal beliefs and the situation they are in. A more important question is should a story cease to exist once an intervention in events has occurred? Yes. It is unethical for a photojournalist to publish a photograph or story after they have intervened in the events because they are no longer an impartial observer.
“Somehow the camera gives us access to the most intimate moments in peoples’ lives. And you do feel out-of-place when you’re photographing a mother cradling a dead son… [o]r a young Marine helping an injured friend…. But at the same time, you know that it’s important to do it. It’s what you’re doing there. Otherwise, stay home and hang out with your PlayStation. … You gotta learn to live with yourself and what you do. You’re very fortunate to be able to record somebody else’s history. … I always understand that it’s the history I’m documenting….”
The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) states in its Code of Ethics that it is every photojournalist’s duty to document significant events, different viewpoints, and to “preserve history through images.” The NPPA Code of Ethics is a guideline for photographers while on assignment. In the guidelines it is stated, “[Code of Ethics #1] Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects, [Code of Ethics #5] While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events, … [and] [Code of Ethics #15] Respect the integrity of the photographic moment.” These ethics do not tell a photographer how to act in a moral situation; they simply state that a story cannot exist once the journalists have become involved in the story and still be an accurate representation of history.
When asking the question, what are the alternatives to maximizing truth-telling and minimizing harm, some believe the most ideal answer is to help victims in a situation and take pictures at the same time (Hall). This is what photojournalist Ted Jackson did while covering Hurricane Katrina. “I felt there were many times during Katrina when I was not just the first responder, but in a way I was the only responder, and if I didn’t help, no one else would.” As admirable as this is, one must ask, “is this ethical and is this the best way to present a story?”
In her article about her trip to Africa with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Casey Parks recalls the lessons she learned about journalist intervention in graduate school at Missouri School of Journalism as she faced her own struggles with doing what was right. “[In Class] we talked… about the issue of journalist intervention. When journalists work on a story, should they themselves become part of the story?… [U]nder no circumstance should a reporter intervene in a story… If journalists change their stories by becoming participants, they are potentially limiting the impact their story could have.”
In his blog post, In the Midst of Looting Chaos, CNN’s Anderson Cooper recounts an instance where he chose to intervene in the story. On Jan. 18, 2010 Cooper and his team were reporting on the earthquake in Haiti when shots were fired from a nearby store that was being looted for supplies. When Cooper witnessed a boy struck in the face by a piece of concrete thrown from the top of the building, Cooper leapt into action; he dragged the severally injured boy from the mob and brought him to safety behind a near by police barricade.
Many criticized Cooper for his heroic actions and CNN for reporting the story, not because they thought he shouldn’t have rescued the small boy but because the whole instance was documented and then reported on by Cooper. Stephen J. A. Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, asks, “Is this compassion or is it congratulations? It’s almost as if [publications] are saying, ‘Look at our correspondents down there.’ It gives me an uncomfortable queasy feeling (qtd. in McIntyre),” and Los Angeles Times’ Matea Gold writes about journalists intervening in Haiti, “Some media ethicists said… [journalists] should consider forgoing their journalistic roles if they’re going to participate in the relief effort (qtd. in Krakauer).”
Others believe that journalism has changed over the past decade from objective reporting to personality-driven reporting. Some believe that journalists who decide to play into their natural human instincts by helping others in need should not be criticized for abandoning their “unobtainable goal of ‘objective’ journalism (McIntyre).” Yet those very same people warn, “[R]eporters should also be aware, that if they get too caught up in their own adventure, they risk becoming reality show stars, and losing the credibility.”
Rather than applying the “Help and Shoot” solution to the maximizing truth-telling and minimizing harm question, as Copper and Jackson did, journalists must practice the “Help” or “Shoot” solutions. Utilitarianism, the doctrine of determining what is right by what will benefit the most people, is difficult but crucial to a photojournalist’s ethics. As a photojournalist I have had to put this doctrine into effect many times and have used this reasoning to support either the “Help” or “Shoot” solutions, but never opting for both at the same time.
Sono Hinthia stands outside his families home in the Boudhanath Slum in Katmandu, Nepal. Sono was in a train accident in India approximently 8 months earleir and lost his hand and part of his arm. Sono, who used to repair shoes, can no longer provide food for his wife and three children.
While on assignment for an online newspaper in Kathmandu, Nepal I had the opportunity to document a small slum community. The residents were malnourished and lived in small shacks made of bamboo, mud, and plastic tarps. When asked by one family if I could provide them food I had to decide if I would intervene and give up the story or shoot the story and deny the family relief. I ultimately decided to shoot the story because it had the potential of effecting a bigger change to many families rather than helping just one family.
On the opposite spectrum, in April 2011, the southern United States was destroyed by a series of tornadoes. When I arrived on the scene in a small town in Alabama I found both journalists and neighbors photographing people who had lost family members and/or their homes giving very little consideration to their emotional state. After seeing that the story was well covered I decided that I could make the biggest impact by putting down my camera and lending a hand searching for missing persons and helping clean up the destruction.
Neither of my decisions were easy to make; I sometimes find myself wishing I could go back and make different decisions. I executed my decision-making to the best of my ability, but I could have chosen differently and fed the family in the Kathmandu slum saving myself from sleepless nights wondering what happened to them, or photographing the destruction in Alabama and making much needed money off of my images.
(Purchase Photograph on James P. McLaughlin Photography website)
Pulitzer Prize winning Photojournalist Kevin Cater received unprecedented criticism from the public and others in his field for taking the world-famous picture of the starving Sudanese girl being followed by a vulture (Marinovich and Silva). Many were concerned that Carter made the decision to not provide aid to the girl and instead took the photograph. Carter, using utilitarianism, assessed the situation and saw that there were aid workers in the area and realized that his photograph would not help this girl but it had the potential to help many others in need.
The Goyal family gathers at night inside of their house. The Goyal family lives in the Boudhanath Slum in Katmandu. The Slum is one of the smallest squatter communities in the Katmandu Valley and is entirely made up of Indians that have moved from Punjab and Rajasthan, India to Katmandu looking for better employment opportunities.
“The picture had caused a sensation. It was being used in posters for raising funds for aid organizations. Papers and magazines around the world had published it, and the immediate public reaction was to send money to any humanitarian organization that had an operation in Sudan. The heart wrenching image of a starving, helpless infant being scrutinized by a vulture had inevitably raised the question, ‘What happened to the little girl?’ and, followed close on that, ‘What did the photographer do to help her?’ … People began to pepper Kevin with questions about the ethics of the shot, about his feelings and actions when he photographed the child. …The image had clearly struck some deep chord… and had been published again and again… Schoolchildren discussed it in classes on ethics. They wanted to understand his actions and his thoughts when he photographed that Sudanese child. Questions about Kevin’s ethics and his humanity were beginning to be asked more frequently; the pressure on him was building. The strain was only greater because Kevin also had his own doubts about his actions that hot day in Ayod, and wrestled with them almost every day.”
(Purchase Photograph on James P. McLaughlin Photography website)
Carter, haunted by the scenes he had photographed through out his young life and feeling the pressure from the criticism he faced, killed himself later that year. He made a difficult but ethically sound decision when he photographed the small child and in doing so he changed the lives of many.
Photographer Clarence Williams and reporter Sonia Nazario of Los Angeles Times documented endangered and neglected children of drug addicts (Paterno). Reporting on terrible and heart-breaking situations the two journalists made the difficult decision of not intervening in the story. When the article, titled “Orphans of Addiction” was published, many in the public were angry that the two journalists did nothing to prevent harm of the children. Executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News says, “I believe I would have done what the Times did. I can see not calling authorities. I can see the thinking the writing about these children… would yield longer lasting results.” Although their actions raised many good questions and concerns, the two journalists made a decision that they thought was right. “If you decide to go to the authorities when you witness abuse, you’d have to call off the story before getting started,” says Times’ editor Leo Wolinsky. “The result is there’d be no investigation; the kids would still be in danger and the public wouldn’t know about it.” In fact at one point Nazario did intervene. “[I] didn’t think twice [when one mother asked for a ride to the hospital for her daughter]. I got in the car and drove her.” Williams chose to stay behind. “I can’t really photograph a reporter driving her to the hospital. Now, she’s part of the story,” he says. “I’m not going to drive to the hospital and then photograph [the subject]. That’s a big fat no. You don’t do that. Because now you’re part of the story. It’s the Golden Rule.”
Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist and co-author of “The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots From a Hidden War”, Greg Marinovich says that his own personal views on moral ethics and guidelines in a war zone were formed from personal experience. On many occasions Marinovich, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, interceded in order to save someone’s life. He says that interceding and changing a picture is jounralistically unethical but that it is a personal choice journalists must make for themselves. Marinocvich goes on and speaks about other unethical practices he has seen over the years (Gross).
“I remember a very famous New York-based photographer was at the funeral of Chris Hani, the communist leader who was assassinated by white extremists. He was directing the show to make for a better picture, and we all immediately wrote to his employer… [Time magazine], and he was pulled off the job…. And this other photographer… would hire a Mercedes-Benz and drive into the township and drive up and down the volatile areas until people started stoning his cars so that he could get the picture.”
Changing a photograph, whether its darkroom or digital manipulation, staging scenes, or exacerbating a delicate situation, is an unethical form of journalist intervention. So why should it be okay for a photographer like Russ Dillingham, who helped police apprehend a suspect by tackling him (Foreman), to change the outcome of a story through intervention? It is not okay to do so and still cover the story. As former NPPA president and Ethics Co-Chair John Long states, “Journalists have only one thing to offer the public and that is credibility. … Without credibility we have nothing. We might as well go sell widgets door to door since with out the trust of the public we cannot exist as a profession.”
Robert Capa says, “It’s not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one.” But the truth is that sometimes documenting history can make a bigger difference than intervention can. While documenting history it is incredibly important to maintain credibility and stay out of the story. Every journalist must wrestle with the issue of ethics, but the tension should be between being an ethical journalist or an ethical human being. Sometimes choosing to be the one will rule out being the other.
Works Cited
Cooprer, Anderson. In the Midst of Looting Chaos. New York: CNN, 2010. Web
Foreman, Gene. The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News.
West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010. ebook.
Gross, Terry. Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Two War Photographers on Their Injuries, Ethics.
Washington: National Public Radio, 2011. Radio
Hall, Sara. To Shoot or Not to Shoot: AN Ethical Question for Photojournalists. Yahoo, 2007.
Web.
Krakauer, Steve. Has CNN Entered Gray Area of Becoming, Not Just Reporting, The Story in
Haiti. Mediaite.com, 2010. Web
Lester, Paul Martin. Photojournalism: An Ethical Approach. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1991. ebook.
Long, John. Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography. Durham: National Press Photographers
Association, 1999. Web.
Marinovich, Greg, and Silva, Joao. The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War. New
York: Basic Books Publishing, 2000. eBook.
McIntyre, Jamie. “The Gupta Effect” – Should Journalist-MDs Be Center Stage in Haiti
Coverage. Military.com, 2010. Web.
NPPA Code of Ethics. Durham: National Press Photographers Association. Web
Parks, Casey. Trip to Africa Shows Master’s Student That Journalism Can and Dows Effect
Change. Columbia: College of Journalism at the University of Missouri, 2006. Web
Paterno, Susan. The Intervention Dilemma: Part 1 and 2. College Park: American
Journalism Review, 1998. Web.
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