LA Times fires photographer for altering photo that ran on Times Page 1

[TC4]

Today the Los Angeles Times had to fire photographer Brian Walski for altering a picture of a British solder to make it appear as though that the solder was theatening an Iraqi man carrying a child

Here is the link to the page from the LA Times with both the 2 phots used as well as the altered photo at the bottom, along with the statement by the Times about the reasons for firing the photographer:

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ednote_blurb.blurb

[Om]

Beyond the obvious outrage, you know what really gets me?

That there is simply no way this is the first time a major paper or media outlet has had this happen.

[The Consigliere]

Some of the Op-Ed pieces over at the LA Times in recent weeks have been so thoroughly revolting, that one could imagine that this photo and it's publication were more a reflection of the attitude of the paper itself and it's staff and not just a reflection of an idiotic photog. It's quite revolting to see that it isn't just our enemies that our bent on misleading the people of the world via the press, it's even our supposedly unbiased news sources. It's a shame that liberal papers like the LA Times give the Liberal Cause such an awful black eye. Then again over the last 18 months the liberal cause has consistently been giving itself black eyes at a much greater rate than anyone else. They've certainly lost me, I'll never be on the right, but the attitudes, and behaviors I've seen from my former compatriots on the left have pushed me into a moderate position, I doubt I'll ever come back.

[Mad Mike]

Originally posted by Om

Beyond the obvious outrage, you know what really gets me?

That there is simply no way this is the first time a major paper or media outlet has had this happen.

Om

Remember the 1988 Summer Olympics? There was a famous photo of a woman runner who had fallen with people leaning over her as she cried. That photo was re-touched to remove the antena of a walkie talkie that looked like it was coming out of her head.

My point being that this stuff was going on long before photoshop made it easy. In most cases the reasons are purely asthetic. In others there may be an agenda at work. Fortunatly it's a big wide world and the truth is a hard thing to hide.

[Mad Mike]

Originally posted by TC4

Today the Los Angeles Times had to fire photographer Brian Walski for altering a picture of a British solder to make it appear as though that the solder was theatening an Iraqi man carrying a child

Here is the link to the page from the LA Times with both the 2 phots used as well as the altered photo at the bottom, along with the statement by the Times about the reasons for firing the photographer:

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ednote_blurb.blurb

TC4 Where did you read that his intent was to make the soldier look more threatening? It does not look that way to me. Looks like the photographer was using the best elements of two weak photos to create one good dramatic one. More a case of somone trying to make up for weak photo skills than somone trying to make the soldierlook bad. Notice that the soldier in the doctored pic is scaled larger to look like he was closer to the camera. It would have been just as easy to make the man w/ the child apear closer and directly in front of the gun.

[TC4]

Originally posted by Mad Mike

TC4 Where did you read that his intent was to make the soldier look more threatening? It does not look that way to me. Looks like the photographer was using the best elements of two weak photos to create one good dramatic one. More a case of somone trying to make up for weak photo skills than somone trying to make the soldierlook bad. Notice that the soldier in the doctored pic is scaled larger to look like he was closer to the camera. It would have been just as easy to make the man w/ the child apear closer and directly in front of the gun.

Several news outlets, including CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC all said thats why the LA Times fired him.

Sorry for failing to mention that.

[Glenn X]

Mike, I know that you're some sort of Photoshop guru and make your living at it, but what Walski did was yellow journalism, plain and simple.

[Mad Mike]

Glen X. I'm not defending the photographers position. What he did was wrong. As a photo journalist (somthing else I know a litle bit about) his job was to record the events as they happend. Doctoring photos to create a better composition is wrong.

Where I disagree with you it seems is in determining the photographers intent. I don't care what the networks say, once you understand that there are things he could have done to make the soldier look like he was pointing the gun at the man with the child you can see that was not his intent. If he had intended on making the soldier look more threatening he could have made his finger look as if it rested on the trigger instead of the safe position outside of the trigger guard. He did not. The doctored photo is clearly an intent to create a more visualy interesting image. I have done the same thing a hundred times for comercial clients. The soldiers stance is more interesting in one photo and the man with child is more interesting in another. That's it.

Depending how you define "yellow journalism" you may or may not agree with me but I define yellow journalism as an intent to decieve with an agenda. The photographer in this case apears to me to be guilty of shoddy journalism. It is unethical in it's intent to get a paycheck by covering up the fact that he did not have a good enough photo to print without doctoring. Fortunately his photoshop work is as shoddy as his photography and he left clear evidence that the photo was re-worked.

One last thing. My comment to Om was a matter of factual clarification. Small amounts of doctoring occur all the time. Usualy it is something simple like removing an antena from a great photo that takes away fom the story or confuses the viewer. However it is the job of a senior photo editor in conjunction with others to determine if it is appropriate and ethical. It is NEVER up to the photographer to decide.

[Glenn X]

Mike, intent -- especially if it appears to be malicious -- is everything in journalism. Factor in the fact that the L.A. Times has been accused numerous times in the past of being pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab, and you've got a situation that is very fishy, which doesn't bode well for a news organization trying to appear to be objective and balanced.

[aREDSKIN]

Mad Mike-

I define yellow journalism as an intent to decieve with an agenda.

This is in essence is the reason why the LA Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post- ET AL exist. Any pretense to the contrary is devoid of any reasonable objective

analysis.

[mardi gras skin]

Mike, the journalist created a confrontation that did not exist. Small, scared man huddled over defenseless child being commanded to stop by the big American soldier with gun didn't happen.

And you're right, that kind of confrontation is more interesting than a soldier just guarding a group of refugees. If it actually happened, it would have been a great shot.

[codeorama]

I don't read the LA Times, but I'll take you guys word for it that it is a liberal or anti war paper.

But ONLY on the issue of the picture, I have to agree with Mad Mike, when I read the story before seeing the picture, I was expecting the soldier to have the gun "literally" aimed at the man and child, but when I saw the picture, my first reaction was that it was not all that threatning. That's just me though.

[PCS]

Hmmmm. Well, it would appear from the couple of hundred news reports on this incident it was the breach of ethics that cost the man his job. One thing to keep in mind I think, is that if the clear divide on his intent between posters on this thread is indicative of things in the public in general, then there may be reason to question that as well.

[JimboDaMan]

I define yellow journalism as an intent to decieve with an agenda.

This is in essence is the reason why the LA Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post- ET AL exist. Any pretense to the contrary is devoid of any reasonable objective analysis.

Now there's a reasonable, objective analysis :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: .

All newspapers provide a slant, sometimes deliberate, sometimes(and more insidiously) almost subconscious. That slant reflects the overall culture at the newspaper, which at the Washington Post is liberal. I don't read the Globe or the LA Times much so I'll take your word about their slant - although for a supposedly liberal paper the Globe has been doing a disgraceful and false hatchet job on John Kerry's background.

The only paper I know of with an overt agenda is the Washington Times. They make no pretense of being objective - their stated mission is to present the conservative agenda. Its never made a profit and I doubt it ever will, but since its still owned by the Unification Church it won't need to as long as the Rev Moon feels the paper suits his purposes.

You don't really think the WTimes, the Wall Street Journal, or the Christian Science Monitor are more objective than say the WPost, do you?

The value of these papers is not their objectivity - they're not - but that their particular slant can balance that of the Post. I read both the WPost and the WTimes. Neither paper will give you the 'truth' but the truth, as they say, is 'out there'.

[JimboDaMan]

Oh, I should have added: the doctored photo does look marginally more threatening. But it seems pretty clear he simply took the "action" aspects of both photos and combined them. Heck, he even used the pose where the soldier's body and the gun were turned away from the man. If the intent was to make the soldier look bad he could have done much more.

No question, you fire him immediately.

[NavyDave]

I read the post for the sports and the Washington times for OP/ ED pieces.

The real shock was getting caught and then admitting it.

Remember this propoganda rag has a huge readership in the peoples republic of Cali.

[Om]

Mike, that this kind of thing has happened and does happen all the time was precisely my initial point. Your amplification of the point is both on point and welcome.

Interesting topic. There are any number of directions we could explore:

– One can let ones' mind wander in directions that make the little hairs on the back of the neck stand up if one allows himself to consider that some of the historical "records" that have become part of the human and national consciousness may, in fact, be the fabrications or compositions of the authors / photographers / editors, etc. Just looking at the photographs in the LA Times, one can see how just a subtle adjustment can completely alter the feel and/or message conveyed by a photograph.

Some photographs define issues for a generation. Be nice to think the that all of the ones we hold as icons are actual depictions. Pictures viewed out of context can frame perceptions enough as it is even without being doctored to fit someone's personal agenda.

– We expend a lot of time and devote endless sincere debate in this country discussing the "free press," and the rights of individuals in that context to both personal expression and access to information. That's a good thing, I think, and we run with the idea. Having done so for several generations now, I think that when it comes to the written word, the general public has by and large learned to take most of it with a jaundiced eye and healthy grain of salt. We see clear examples of that attitude every day right here on this message board.

I don't think the general public has acquired quite that discerning (skeptical?) an eye toward the visual media, at least not in the context of pictures presented as "news." Seems a bit surprising, considering our exposure to the evolution of computer-generated wizardry from Hollywood and photo-shop gurus on line the world over.

We aren't surprised by much we see on screens large or small anymore, but for some reason, that detachment and skepticism hasn't really seemed to carry over to still photography in the "news" context. For better or worse, we seem to trust that the FX wizards and Reuters photographers generally are not in bed together.

So ... what happens over time if and when a society finally stops believing either the written word or photographic evidence provided them on a daily basis under the guise of "reporting"?

– Do those around the world who hold our "freedoms" in contempt, and actively work to combat them, find comfort in knowing that a major US newspaper ran doctored photos taken of a war being fought, arguably, to bring concepts such as freedom of the press to a land where they are sadly lacking?

And if they do, do they also secretly marvel at the almost miraculous phenomenon of self-policing and accountability and consequences?

– Is anybody else as regularly thankful as I am to have been born to a life in which the immediate concerns over sustenance and shelter – concerns that have occupied the human condition for tens of thousands of years – no longer preclude me from a) ruminating at will and at length on such ephemeral questions as these, having the time to frame said kinds of questions, and ask them without concerns of possible repercussions to me or my family from an oppressive government, and c) enjoying the sort of public fora to pose and discuss them as that which you and I are availing ourselves at this moment?

*

Somebody stop me.

[TC4]

Originally posted by NavyDave

I read the post for the sports and the Washington times for OP/ ED pieces.

The real shock was getting caught and then admitting it.

Remember this propoganda rag has a huge readership in the peoples republic of Cali.

In fact ND, the LA Times is the ONLY newspaper in the city of LA, the 2nd largest city in the US.

[stratoman]

Talking about a liberal bias, Alexander Haig was on Hannity & Colmes last night and he stated that the NY Times had asked him to do an oped on the war plan but had to put a slant on it that criticized the administration. He declined. The LA Times may have told their people to report with that type of slant seeing that they have done this in the past. Maybe the photographer wanted not to be too obvious.

[JimboDaMan]

stratoman-

That the Times explicitly or implicitly encouraged the photog to snap a certain kind of picture would not surprise me in the least. Every newspaper does this. Darn near every pic of Dubya in the WPost has a goofy grin and elephant ears, and Al Gore in the WTimes always appears to have irritable bowels.

But please don’t tell me you believe that any established news outlet condones image doctoring for political purposes. That kind of belief belongs out on the paranoid fringe with those who figure its really the Illuminati who rule us all.

[codeorama]

Originally posted by JimboDaMan

That kind of belief belongs out on the paranoid fringe with those who figure its really the Illuminati who rule us all.

Youv'e heard of that too? I stumbled across a website by accident that had a bunch of Illuminati crap... It was funny, but creepy, especially to think that there are a bunch of people that honestly believe it.

Among the things they had, one article was about Bush's grandfather funding the Third Reich and Bush's over use of the word "homeland" which Hitler used with the same frequency... That was their "proof"...

[stratoman]

Originally posted by JimboDaMan

stratoman-

But please don’t tell me you believe that any established news outlet condones image doctoring for political purposes. That kind of belief belongs out on the paranoid fringe with those who figure its really the Illuminati who rule us all.

No I don't believe that the LA Times condones doctoring of a photo for political purposes. I was just putting out there the idea that maybe the photographer did this on his own to make it more slanted to the fews of his employer. Buttom line is we may never know why he did it. Paraniod fringe..not hardly! If you misinterpreted my original post..sorry. Who is Dubya??

[aREDSKIN]

JimboDaMan-

Now there's a reasonable, objective analysis

Well I thought most would understand that since it's a well know fact, for those who have been exposed to it, that the LA Times etc are very liberal organizations.

The only paper I know of with an overt agenda is the Washington Times. They make no pretense of being objective - their stated mission is to present the conservative agenda.

Now you understand. I think. It's the decievers out there that grate me. The Liberal establishment, with their covert agendas, out there is what MadMike and I were agreeing on. Now if they wore that liberal agenda on their sleeve, as you describe the WT, then it would be less objectionable, at least to me.

You don't really think the WTimes, the Wall Street Journal, or the Christian Science Monitor are more objective than say the WPost, do you?

Depending on the issue certainly do.

But please don’t tell me you believe that any established news outlet condones image doctoring for political purposes. That kind of belief belongs out on the paranoid fringe with those who figure its really the Illuminati who rule us all.

Well history has proved otherwise. Both left & right have done this here and abroad. The LA Times happened to get caught with their pants down. :puke:

stratoman-

Talking about a liberal bias, Alexander Haig was on Hannity & Colmes last night and he stated that the NY Times had asked him to do an oped on the war plan but had to put a slant on it that criticized the administration. He declined. The LA Times may have told their people to report with that type of slant seeing that they have done this in the past. Maybe the photographer wanted not to be too obvious.

Stratoman I think that was Lawerence Eagleburger not (deep throat) Al Haig.

[stratoman]

Originally posted by aREDSKIN

JimboDaMan-

Stratoman I think that was Lawerence Eagleburger not (deep throat) Al Haig.

Thanks for the correction!.

[Darth Tater]

The alteration did not change the story the picture told to a great degree (especially one of aggression), how can anybody think that? In fact, the photog was fired because he would NOT (maybe could not -- lacked the skills?) alter the picture to make the British soldier appear more aggressive (move the gun or his gun hand).