The Miami Herald ran a front-page picture today of a grieving father clutching his daughter’s lifeless body with a story about hurricane-ravaged Haiti. A tiny pair of legs belonging to a different child—dead and naked—was deleted from the bottom, left corner. The unedited photo is online with several other pictures of a naked 7-year-old boy pushing a broken stroller through squalor.
The New York Times has a photo of an African king—man worth about $200 million—dressed in his beaded, tribal garb. The story is about corruption, private planes, entourages and luxury cars. The traditional dress was for a special ceremony.
Thanks to the power of the Internet what’s cropped out of a newspaper photo is only a click a way to millions of viewers worldwide, as is the case like the first example given. On any given day, 50 million Americans click on Web sites to get their news online, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And those figures come from a two-years-old report.
What’s interesting is the alleged conversation that took place inside the Herald highlights the different journalistic standards applied to newspapers and their Web sites.
What’s good for the Web is definitely not good for the paper, which tends handle information more conservatively than their cyber counterpart. Most online message boards are evidence of that, spiraling into virtual markets of hateful language that rarely—if ever—would be printed in a newspaper. Click on just about any SunSentinel story then read the comments if you don’t believe me.
The beginning chapter of our class textbook stresses journalists who publish in cyberspace must subscribe to the same tenets as those whose words and images appear in newsprint or television screens.
“Although there are many kinds of journalism, practiced by many different kids of people in many different places and for many types of media, some common thread connect-or at least should connect-all journalists,” James C. Foust wrote in "Online Journalism: Principles and Practices of News for the Web."
So, why the breakdown between principle and practice?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Just read the conversation the staffers had that led to the dead girl's legs and crotch being removed from the photo that appeared in print. Why wasn't that decision applied to the online photo gallery? I'm at a loss. Just because an item (text, photo, videos, etc.) runs only online doesn't make it less offensive, tactless or exploitative.
Not taking care to craft the multimedia aspect of reports only makes exploitation easier, given that anyone anywhere can latch onto the most offensive portions for their own purposes.
Migrating to the web doesn't mean journalistic standards should be left behind, or to die with the medium. Online editors/producers across the industry really need to be more conscientious at this point. We've already been through the trial & error period with this stuff....
I think we're just beginning the trial and error period... will be interesting to discuss this further in class.
Post a Comment