Photojournalism and the Notion of Objectivity – The Particularity of Photography and its Relationship with Truthfulness (original) (raw)

Photojournalism: Journalistic Reality and Necessity

IRA International Journal of Education and Multidisciplinary Studies (ISSN 2455–2526), 2016

Aylan Kurdi, a three year old Syrian boy’s image carried on the front pages of newspapers and magazines in September 2015 was enough to stop the world in its tracks. It embodied the ravages of the Syrian war which has made headlines in newspapers and in the mass media in the past few years. Photo journalism is “Journalism in which written copy is subordinate to pictorial presentation of news stories or in which a high proportion of pictorial presentation is used, is broadly news photography” according to Miriam Webster’s dictionary. News photography sears, it captures reality. It is a necessity in this world which requires evidence and substantiation. This paper aims to study the photos related to the war in Syria; especially photos of Aylan Kurdi a three year old boy washed ashore while escaping with his family from Syria. The impact of these photographs on readers has been made through a qualitative study with in-depth interviews. The disturbing nature of the photographs, the know...

Photojournalism and Press Photography as a Reassurance of Reality

Anadolu Üniversitesi Sanat & Tasarım Dergisi, 2017

Press photographs meet us as individual images or in bigger groups in the context of a report or sequence, in publish or online media, published as print negatives, slides or digital files. The mass of published images follows positive image patterns or photo types that are constantly repeated and handed down a culture of set recognition. So, these images not only submit to other photographs but also often to subjects from other visual media, such as, for example, the painting. Although the drawing of boundaries between art and press photography becomes increasingly porous and the mutual reference of these genres is widely used, it is still worth asking what specifically characterizes a press photo. First of all, press images are photographs originated at a specific location that want to make a statement about this place and a specific action. A certain representationally or likeness is common to them, so that they seem to reflect reality with special truthfulness. In this sense, press images are used in their respective publication contexts as information carriers, which have a particular function of testifying or proving. Similar to the history painting in the 19th century, press images must visualize a complex situation comprehensibly and catchy. In order to guarantee and to support their readability, almost all press images have an accompanying text or a caption.

RE-EXAMINING THE CREDIBILITY OF PHOTOJOURNALISM IN THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND EDITING ERA

Benin MEDIACOM JOURNAL...For Critical Media Research, Evaluation and Analysis , 2011

Photojournalism has a long and cherished tradition of truthfulness. The impact of the visual image on a viewer comes directly from the belief that the "camera never lies." As a machine, the camera faithfully and unemotionally records a moment in time. Thus, a machine is only as truthful as the hands that guide it, but that public trust however, can also be manipulated. There is a growing concern on the ethical dimension of the new technological advances that allow easy and undetectable picture manipulation which have caused the public to be unconcerned about the truthful content of photographs. Such accusations are usually easily proven unsubstantiated and are the exception rather than the rule for photojournalism. However, it has been argued that computer technology puts photographic faking on a new level of concern as images can be digitized and manipulated without the slightest indication of such trickery. The media have been criticized for showing so many gruesome images that the public has hardened toward violent injustices. The dangers of journalism with such manipulations diminish the journalistic credibility, impact and self-respect, and the importance of photography as communication. With all the ethical issues, photojournalists should be concerned about picture manipulation, especially through the use of computers, because the threat to credibility is irreversible if the public starts to mistrust the integrity of the news photograph. This study therefore seeks to ascertain the practice of photojournalism in this digital photography and editing era. It also seeks to examine the extent of the use of photo manipulations in Nigerian print media. This is to determine how the use of photo manipulation affects the audience believability of the credibility of photojournalism in Nigerian magazines.

Media and Ethical Issues in Photo-Journalism

Research on humanities and social sciences, 2014

The media profession is characterized by entrants of untrained personnel or trained personnel who are not really educated. This crop of vocationally low esteemed persons, who have radically burrowed themselves into the fabrics of this noble profession, have continued to constitute aberration to the profession and bastardized the image of practitioners. Such ‘journalists’ who should conduct themselves as watch dogs of society, have ironically not only availed themselves as instruments for compromising professional standard, but have also exacerbated societal problems by using their pen to deepen disunity. What could have been responsible for this irony? Are there no existing laws in the profession that impel every member to obedience? This paper contends that there are, but outright disregard for these ethics, either because of poor education, interest or sentiments must have been responsible for the abuse. Through exploration of contents (corpus) material, the writers provide a subt...

Visual Journalism, or the Hidden Narration

Thierry Gervais (dir.), The Public Life of Photographs, Toronto, Ryerson mage Center Books, 2016, p. 111-127.

Despite the publication of hundreds upon thousands of photographs in the press, most analyses of photojournalism focus on iconic photographs and iconic images in photography. This chapter aims to highlight how such news icons have lost their status as transparent conveyors of information to take on that of upgraded graphic forms, produced by a self-fulfilling institutionalization process. Iconic images comprise a small group of images that are chosen by the profession of photojournalism and are representative of the narrative stereotypes created by the media industry. They are the most obvious manifestation of the hierarchical organization of information, based on semiotic criteria, of which photography has been an important component since the beginning of the twentieth century. Photographic “icons” provide the proof of and illustrate narrative visual practices in news media, an idea largely ignored by the profession, or uncritically accepted by it as a “magic” encounter between the objective and the aesthetic.

Veracity and credibility in contemporary documentary photography

Tríade, 2022

The reflections of Ritchin and Fontcuberta on the loss of credibility of images with the consolidation of the use of the digital system of images in the practice of photography and photojournalism, pointed out questions related to the question of veracity and credibility not yet exhausted, which allow for a deeper debate. Through bibliographic reviews by researchers such as Sontag, Machado, Flusser, Cotton, Dubois, Agamben, Baudrillard and Lissovsky, the central hypothesis of the article is that if we are in the midst of an effective loss of credibility of the images, with a consequent deconstruction of the concept of adherence to the idea of reality, contemporary photojournalism should have the role of eyewitness to history questioned. However, the conclusion of this article points to the idea that we are facing a false dilemma, since the issue of veracity in documentary photography in the current digital age remains present and associated with the issue of credibility of those who produce and publish the images. Keywords: documentary photography; reconfiguration of images; veracity; credibility.

RELEVANCE OF PHOTO JOURNALISM IN MASS COMMUNICATION

ABSTRACT Relevance of photojournalism in mass communication and its critical uses in mass media. This paper is aimed at highlighting the importance of visual communication in mass media and to urge the intellectuals for the need to receive maximum research attention and to bring it to the front burner of intellectual discourse, to evaluate the role of Photography in print media as well as broadcast journalism, it is a good complement to a written and broadcast copies. Ultimately the purpose of photojournalism in mass communication is to communicate visually and graphically. The paper recommended that higher institutions of learning studying mass communication should give photojournalism a pride of place in view of its complementary role in both print and broadcast journalism. It increases the newspaper readership. It has also enabled journalists to present facts in clearer and in effective way. Both private and public media owners will synergize in sponsoring workshops for capacity building to train photojournalist to update their knowledge of camera handling and produce the best input in mass media or best print and broadcast journalism in visual communication.