News photography documents unvarnished truths: Public Editor

In journalism, the truth of images matters every bit as much as the truth of words.

Just as fabrication is the cardinal sin of those who write the news, manipulating pictures is the zero-tolerance transgression of those who photograph the news.

As a reader, you must know with all certainty that what you see published in the newspaper and online is indeed what the journalist’s camera saw.

This core ethic of photojournalism has been the subject of much discussion in newsrooms around the globe this week after The Associated Press announced it “severed ties” with a Pulitzer Prize-winning freelance photographer who digitally altered an image he captured in Syria last year.

As the Star reported Thursday, the AP said photographer Narciso Contreras told editors he manipulated a digital picture of a Syrian rebel fighter taken last September, using software to remove a colleague’s video camera from the lower left corner of the image.

While the Star is an AP client and uses its photos daily, it did not publish this photo.

Contreras was part of the AP team awarded a Pulitzer last year for powerful news images of the war in Syria. All of his photos have now been removed from AP’s publicly available archive.

While some judge the news service’s reaction to be overly harsh, arguing that the photo altering did not alter the meaning of the image, it was a clear violation of the AP’s ethics code regarding the truth and accuracy of images. And while I imagine it wasn’t easy to reveal this ethical breach to the world, the AP’s transparency and accountability here is commendable — a model for media organizations on owning up to journalistic lapses.

Taras Slawnych, the Star’s visuals editor, agreed totally with the AP’s call on this ethical transgression: “The Star would never do that to a news photo,” he told me. “The integrity of photos has to be there. If you cross that ethical line and alter what’s real in an image you lose credibility.”

The Star’s ethics policy holds our visual journalists (those who shoot still photos and video) to the same standards of accuracy, fairness and transparency as all other Star journalists. While the code says that digital manipulation is permissible to improve technical quality (colour, contrast and basic sharpening), it makes clear that “any alteration or enhancement that renders a photo inaccurate or misleading is forbidden.”

While news photos in the Star “document reality,” sometimes feature stories are accompanied by “photo illustrations” that take creative liberties with images. The Star’s policy stipulates these must be labelled as such so readers clearly understand the image has been constructed.

I have no doubt all of the Star’s staff photographers understand and hold true to this professional ethic. So too do the Star’s photo editors know that electronic manipulation of news photos is verboten.

But, given that the Star and news organizations everywhere increasingly publish photos obtained from many outside sources, including social media, “citizen journalists” and “handout photos” from sources, there’s greater need to ensure the authenticity of photos before publishing them.

“There is always a chance that a submitted photo is not truthful. We must take steps to verify and ask ‘is this image real, is it truthful?’” Slawnych said, noting that today’s electronic tools make altering images easier than ever.

So how do these standards square with the controversy over a handout real estate photo of a Mississauga mansion up for auction published recently in the Star? As Susan Pigg, the Star’s real estate reporter, wrote last week, the “show-stopping photo” was taken with a wide-angle lens that appears to double the length of the home’s cobblestone driveway. The photographer hired by the real estate agent also acknowledged to Pigg that the photo is a “blending” of a few different exposures to capture the home in its best light.

While such electronic manipulation is common practice in advertising and marketing, and also some magazines, it is not in line with the Star’s photo standards, Slawnych told me. Still, like Slawnych, I don’t have concerns of a significant lapse on the Star’s part here.

I think most readers will understand that handout MLS listing photos are advertising and marketing tools — not photojournalism — and what you see is rarely exactly what you get. As Pigg so aptly put it in her story about the photo controversy: “those glitzy real estate photos are meant to sell a dream, and a home.”

But, given that this photo was published in the Star’s news pages to illustrate a story about the auction of the monster home, I am concerned that there was no photo credit included to indicate it was a handout marketing photo. While this was an unintended omission, readers needed that to clearly understand this glossy image was a realtor’s photo intended to enhance reality.

For the Star, the reality is that both words and images must document truth, however unvarnished.