Multimedia Ethics
By James Brown, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Executive Associate Dean Emeritus
Indiana University School of Journalism, IUPUI

Don Winslow, editor of News Photographer magazine, wrote me and other professors stating, he would like to have “… quotes from photojournalism college professors about what they think are the most pressing ethical concerns facing multimedia photojournalism and online visual reporting these days.”

I have thought about this very issue often. As print photojournalists have embraced, or have been forced to embrace, multimedia as a way of telling a story, many have ethical concerns. Most print photojournalists would prefer to be completely unnoticed as they go about their work and in a perfect world so would TV photojournalists. Often the best moments in pictures come when the subject is ignoring the camera and photographer.  For decades now, still photo equipment has been relatively unobtrusive.

The major difference between traditional photojournalism and multimedia is the addition of sound and motion. And that is a huge difference. There is no doubt that sound can be a super additive catalyst in making a story even more compelling. Pictures have the capacity to create emotion and sound can add another layer of emotion. We have often seen still pictures with synchronized comments by the photographer, which helps frame the interpretation of the pictures. Motion can help explain detail where movement is important.

So what is the problem? From a still photographer’s perspective, recording sound ratchets up the level of intrusiveness. We don’t have to be recording engineers to know that the closer the microphone is to the source, the better the signal to noise ratio. Frequently, this involves putting a wireless microphone on the subject and running the cable inside the shirt or blouse of the subject.

Shooting video has the potential to be even more intrusive. Now the photographer has to worry about screen direction and attempting to find repetitive action that one can edit into a matched action sequence.  There may be multiple changes of tripod setups for different views. Photographers can no longer be as unobtrusive as they might wish.

Another source of conflict is the real or perceived differences in standard newsgathering practices between TV stations and traditional print news organizations. A reporter and photographer from a station in my town arrived late to an event. While there had been a large crowd earlier, most had gone home. The reporter and photographer totally manipulated the scene by asking remaining participants to gather together so the crowd would look bigger in the shot. Additionally, the participants were asked to recreate, for the TV camera, what they had been doing earlier. One of my students was in the crowd and she brought up the situation for class discussion. Only two students, from a class of 50, thought that the TV reporter and photographer had acted ethically. To be fair, this same form of manipulation has occurred with area newspaper photographers as well. The NPPA code of ethics states,” While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.” This is not a practice that TV or print photographers should engage in.
But the mere presence of a TV reporter can be more intrusive than a print reporter and photographer reporting on the same situation. This is primarily due to the TV crew’s attempt at presenting the reporter as “on the scene” and on top of bringing the news to the viewing audience. More than any other news format, TV injects the reporter into the visual coverage of the story. When print photographers move into multimedia, they often let the subject tell their own story albeit with help from editing and sequencing from the photographer.  This form of story telling can be more interesting and engaging than the average talking head reporter telling us what is happening. However, masters of the TV narrative story such as Bob Dotson or Boyd Huppert can make us forget the talking head.

When I was refreshing my video skill, I shot a video of a bicycle being assembled at a high-end custom shop. I took the edited video to my friend Steve Sweitzer, former NPPA president, and braced for a brutal critique. You only get better by taking criticism from someone who has been there, done that, and excelled. One of his many criticisms was the loud radio playing in the background. It really detracted from the sound I wanted in the video and when I made edits for the picture, I made a jump cut in the song audio. Sweitzer made the point that you need clear audio for your pictures and I didn’t have it due to the radio. “You mean I should have turned the radio down or off,” I said.

“Yes, under certain circumstances” Sweitzer replied. “Ask yourself what the story is about, if the radio’s part of the story, by all means, leave it in but if it’s just a distraction from the sound you need to tell the story, in this case the sound of the bike chain as it spins through the gears, you might have to exercise some control over the background noise; maybe use a lavalier microphone rather than the stereo microphone on the camera. Sometimes you have to ask a reporter to quit talking or shut a window to eliminate the lawn mower noise outside.” Sweitzer’s practical test is to ask himself if he had to explain to a room full of viewers what he had done, would they believe he had behaved unethically or in some way created a visual lie. That’s a good test.
Print photojournalists who are exploring unfamiliar technologies are just not used to new variables that may affect the story. It makes them ethically nervous. There are real differences between print and television on what is acceptable in terms of control of the scene, intrusiveness and asking subjects to recreate actions for the camera. According to Steve Sweitzer, “Most TV photographers, but not all, would agree that it is unethical for someone to ‘recreate’ actions.”

There is some acceptable middle ground. There is no doubt that one has to be careful about gathering good sound that is good enough to augment a visual story. This might mean asking the subject to move to a quieter location for an interview. Is that intrusive? Yes, but it may be necessary to have usable sound. You have to use your own judgment in the field. If you feel you are doing something that makes you uncomfortable or might put the veracity of the story in jeopardy, you should discuss it with your editor. If a photographer makes some intervention in the field, it should be explained in a brief note on the web site. In my situation, the note might say, “In order for you to better hear conversation of the employees in the bicycle shop, we asked that the radio playing loudly in the background be turned off.”

Print and broadcast practices come from the history and convention of different story forms.
At some level there is inherent manipulation of reality in every act of a photographer in both print and broadcast beginning with making the appointment to shoot the story. Many variables come to play when the shutter is pressed on either a still camera or a video one. Lens selection and viewpoint, editing, sequencing and timing of pictures are but a few of the decisions that we know may have an effect on the meaning of the story in the viewer’s mind.

All photographers could work at being better at anticipating behavior and being at the right place for the shot you need without any direction of the subject. If possible ask what the subject is planning to do when you first meet. This will help you plan shots in an unobtrusive manner.

All concerns about the technology and processes of multimedia story telling should be openly discussed in the newsroom. Would you add music to the soundtrack of a news story? No. But what if the story was a feature story? Each news organization should arrive at policies that guide reporters and photographers in the field. Ethical concerns make us think about what we ought to be doing in seeking the “truth” of a story.

And after all, what is “truth?”