The Power and Pitfalls of Photojournalism

Photojournalist Mark Hancock once wrote: “ A journalist tells a stories. A photographer takes pictures, a photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into a powerful medium”. For many years visuals such as photos have been used to add context to an article, photo’s can allow the reader to relate and or understand the story better. Rather than just reading about an event photo’s that accompany a story connect the viewer to the story in ways that words can not. That being said, although photojournalist photos are meant to be transparent and accurate it is becoming more and more apparent that news outlets and freelance photojournalists are manipulating and photoshopping images. Photojournalist are constantly finding themselves having to detach themselves from their subjects and act quickly and often times because they work in such fast paced environments they are on the receiving end of

As a result of their fast paced working environment they sometimes must disregard Rushword Kidder’s ethical decision making paradigms and especially the resolution principles that were discussed in lecture which are end based, rule-based and care based resolution principles. Sometime photojournalist ignoring and disregard the issues it results in a better image however, more often times than not photoournalist are ridiculed and looked down upon for being unethical. Due to the work enviornemnt that they find themselves in and the fact that they can not recreate or are not supposed to recreate events, photojournalist are forced to cut corners to better portray an event that took place. As stated earlier unlike print journalist photojournlasit do not have the luxury of reporting after an event, they must be live and shot exactly what they see not what other tell them they