Photoshop and ethics

Today we live in an image based society and with software such as Photoshop available, it is getting harder and harder to tell the difference between natural, unaltered pictures and those that have been digitally manipulated. One girl I know regularly alters her Facebook pictures. I know this because her Facebook pictures show her as being a really tiny, petite girl when in reality she is much bigger than that.

Magazines are notorious for air-brushing pictures to make celebrities look better and this has caused insecurities in so many women.

Recently, an Egyptian newspaper completely altered the entire picture. It was a picture taken by Pablo Martinez Monsivais of the Associated Press and it showed President Barack Obama with Middle-Eastern leaders in Washington, D.C. The leaders were there to start a round of peace talks. The leaders at the meeting were President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Barack Obama, President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

This was the original picture taken at the White House:
However, last week Egypt’s largest state-run newspaper, Al-Ahram, printed the newspaper with this image:
In this picture we see Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak now leading. He was originally on the far left of the photo. Not only has he been moved, he’s also been flopped so his right leg is in front of the left leg.

The NPPA (National Press Photographers Associations) Board of Directors say, "We the National Press Photographers Association, reaffirm the basis of our ethics: Accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession. We believe photojournalistic guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. Altering the editorial content ... is a breach of the ethical standards recognized by the NPPA."

The NPPA is an American organization so one can argue that Egyptian newspapers don't follow the same rules and codes of ethics. In my previous blog I mentioned how ethics differed from country to country but in my opinion no matter where the journalist is from he or she should never digitally manipulate a picture. A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words but if it is Photoshopped it loses its credibility completely.