Blog Exercise 5 - Ethics

Ethics can be a tricky question because there is no clear definition on the word. What is ethics exactly? Some may say that it is not ethical to do certain things but others might totally disagree on the same matter so there's really just a fine line~ And when photography comes into play depending on your profession, ethics are essentially what photographers should live by.
Without it, photographers lose their credibility and their sense of responsibility towards the public especially if the photographer is for a reputable newspaper say eg The Straits Times, unless of course if you're a photographer for tabloid papers or magazines, then in such cases, ethics sometimes count for nuts....
In this era of digital manipulation, whereby celebrities on magazine covers look almost always flawless, or whereby using composition with different photos to make something look incredulous such as a baby sitting in a crocodile's mouth, etc, how then do us readers judge the credibility of the images?

Personally like i mentioned above, if the photographers are from a reputable and credible medium in references to newspapers, then most of the time readers should be able to trust them as they are "supposed" to report on true events, or judge for ourselves if the photos look too incredulous to be true.
In cases of say fashion magazines, most readers should know that the models or celebrities on covers are photoshopped as in the case of the Dove commercial but there will still be some clueless readers who are not as tech saavy or knows much about photoshop so it really depends on the general knowledge of the reader. And as much as I can say a few more ways to judge the credibility of an image, if the person who is manipulating the photo is really good at what he/she does, then it is most of the time difficult to tell whether the image has been retouched before whether or not it comes from a credible source and whether or not the reader is tech saavy etc.
And if readers are constantly shown images that are manipulated, chances are that they might become unconcerned about the truthful content of the photos itself and that in itself is more of a concern.

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If i am working for a newspaper and I'm supposed to response to a reader complaining about a picture of a car wreck that was to him/her very upsetting, then referring to utilitarianism theory, I would response by saying that the photo was taken to show the truth to the public and by no means meant to offend anyone. It is shown to warn the public that these things do happen to people and will act for the greater good of the public.

However of course there has to be a certain limit as to how gruesome or violent the photo can be to be published for public's viewing as public also refer to children or the underaged. There might be certain materials that are deemed not suitable for these people. In fact the media has often been criticized for showing so many violent or gory images to the public that it results in the public becoming hardened towards violent injustices, which would be critically bad for the society if we were all to become emotionless.

Thus if the picture that the reader complained is really too gory, then I might have to apologise to the reader and inform him/her that we would evaluate the limits of such publications in future. I would do that because being from a newspaper organisation doesn't mean that we are always right or truthful. In fact we would have a responsibility towards the public over what we publish and whether it is ethical or not.

But if I do stand by the case that the picture which was supposedly too upsetting for the reader, was in fact within reasonable limits then I will have to let the reader know like what i had mentioned in the earlier paragraph, that we intend to show the truth for the better of society, so that the public can be more well-informed of such incidents and take better precautions themselves.