Gratuitous use of Colbert: I could have put a pic of just the ugly Montauk Monster here, but instead I am balancing the ugly out with the beauty of Stephen Colbert.
Sarah Kliff of Newsweek just wrote a great (web exclusive) article titled: Is Seeing Believing? – In the age of Photoshop, the ‘Montauk Monster’ picture raises questions about the veracity of photography.
The public’s skepticism over whether or not they can believe what they see in photographs isn’t unwarranted. Just last week, Beijing organizers admitted to using “previously recorded footage” and computerized images during the Olympic opening ceremony to enhance the quality of fireworks for broadcast on television. A month before that, a doctored photograph of Iranian missiles turned up on front pages across the globe. The alteration—an extra missile added to the image—was outed within hours of the photograph’s publication. “With technology, you can make the moment anything you want it to be,” says John Long, the ethics committee chair for the National Press Photographers Association. “Our credibility has been stretched in so many ways, so I don’t think the public has a great deal of faith in us.” He admits the past year hasn’t been the best for photojournalism’s credibility but doesn’t think the future is particularly gloomy—it just puts the burden on the photojournalist to tell the truth, rather than on the photograph itself. “Just like we trust the reporter to represent what they see accurately, we’re going to have to develop that same relationship with photographers,” he says. NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Kliff spoke with Long about why the credibility of photojournalism has fallen, whether or not doctored photographs are more likely to get caught these days, and how photographers can reclaim the public’s trust.
