What are you saying, that the news media should abandon their
policies of not allowing manipulations? That it should become a free-
for-all where anything goes and no picture should be trusted?
I think the possibility of getting fired is fairly good incentive for
not retouching photographs, at least for staff and freelance
photographers.
Before the digital days when a newspaper received a photograph from
someone not on staff it was easier to keep these mistakes from
happening. Now it's not as simple. Perhaps newspapers should adopt
a policy of examining the EXIF data on photographs from non-staff
photographer sources to see if any manipulation has occurred. If
there's any doubt they should not publish the picture until they have
seen the original. This would be similar to the way film was handled
when I was a staff photographer and lab tech--except in rare
circumstances, such as historical/family pictures, we worked directly
from the negatives or transparencies.
Rich Mason
On Apr 24, 2007, at 1:08 AM, Alberto Tirado wrote:
So, what good is the NYT policy if the photo ran
anyway? The photo was *not* from a staff photographer
in the first place. So may I be so bold to insist: we
might as well never have found out, and then what!
http://richmason.com
