Question #7
On Sept. 2, the Associated Press ran a story, “Photo Captions From Katrina Stir Debate,” about how two photographs posted next to each other on a Yahoo news Web site enraged viewers/readers. The photographs, taken by AP and AFP photographers depicted people carrying things through flood waters in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The reason for the debate was not what was in the photographs, but instead, the words used to describe them. Apparently, in one of the photographs a young black man carrying a bag is described as having “looted” items, while the other image showing a white man described him as having “found” things. Although it appeared that the juxtaposition of the two images on the Yahoo site was unintentional, many people viewing the images and reading the captions jumped to the conclusion that the journalists responsible for describing the scenes were being racist. Later both agencies explained the process in which the scenes were described by the photographers in the captions, saying they were being truthful in explaining what they saw. Who is at fault here, if anyone? What is the photographer’s role? What is the copy editor’s role? What is Yahoo Web site’s role? What are your thoughts on this?
posted by Kate at 8:28 AM
3 Comments:
No one is at fault here because the whole controversy was a misunderstanding. The photographers did their jobs correctly and reported objectively. If a person walks into a store and comes out with food it is obvious that they looted and this needs to be reported regardless of the person's skin color. Yahoo could have prevented this controversy by not putting the two pictures next to each other, but it is easy to say this in hindsight. I think Yahoo learned that it needs to watch out for how its readers are going to interpret what is written.
9:17 AM, November 07, 2005
This is a hard situation to deal with. I think that the photographers are not at fault because it sounds like they were truthful in their reporting but I do think that yahoo is at fault. Before anything is put on their website they should know that they need to closely look at how it is placed. Everything today is under such scrutiny of being politically correct that journalists have to know that their job is harder because you never know how someone will take news items. But this does not mean that these pictures should not be seen by the public, it is not our job to censor the news but to send it out, hopefully in a way that does not offend people. Also there is the question of if we are trying to be politically correct does that skew the news focus? Probably yes it does, but I think we are living in a time when we have to have both a politically correct agenda and an honest one.
10:50 AM, November 07, 2005
"Finding" definitely implies more innocence than "looting." In fact, it sounds almost commendable. "Looting," on the other hand, sounds accusatory at best. It would be interesting to hear the photographers' takes on the event. What is the definition of looting? What is the definition of finding? How did the photographers know which had happened? Is that even a judgement they could accurately make? Someone who reviewed the photos, wrote or edited the cutlines, or laid the page out, should have noticed the discrepancy and made the appropriate changes. It seems to me this was a mistake, not an act of malicious discrimination. Nonetheless, it is just this kind of mishap that gives journalism a bad name - especially when it comes to ethnic diversity and covering issues with accuracy. These photos & their cutlines were seen by a number of editors who should have noticed the sensitivity and accuracy issue (especially since it involves directly blaming someone for theft) and changed the captions.
1:12 PM, November 07, 2005
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