Credibilty and the Media

In an earlier post I tried to differentiate between the manner in which I commented on the altered pictures removed by Reuters and the manner in which the right wing blogs commented. While they deserve credit for uncovering the alterations, I was ultimately bothered by the degree to which they tried to turn this into a major media scandal.

Editor & Publisher reviews this subject in a column entitled Photojournalism in Crisis. They discuss what I feared from the attitude of the conservative bloggers:

The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them.

It is of some value when a photographer is exposed for altering a photograph. If honest reporting is the goal, then those who expose the alterations deserve credit. However, if the goal is to undermine the credibility of all photographers and reporters, or to perpetuate their myth of liberal bias in the news media, then this particular discovery is far from sufficient to demonstrate their case.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Ron Chusid says:

    We do have an interesting comment on this from someone who has worked as a foreign correspondent but it wound up under the wrong post under “Honor” Killing in Italy.

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