“A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of nouns (people, places and things). A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available - frozen images”. Lester (1995) on the other hand suggested that photojournalism is the profession in which journalists make news-editorial images for print and broadcast media.
A picture says a thousand words. That is how powerful an image is. With the addition of well chosen, significant texts, that could be able to educate, persuade and even entertain us.
“Images evoke almost immediate emotional responses among viewers and images have tremendous impact” -Lester, 1995.
As proven the power of photojournalism, there are some who misused the power spoken to their own advantage. This is normally used for business and not to inform. For example, entertainment magazines tend to use the power of photojournalism to influence its reader into buying their product. They use powerful images; scandalous images. As we are well informed, sex sells. Therefore, most photojournalist tends to use images that have to do with sex, if possible. If not, they use images of prominent names in sensationalizing the story.
For instance, OK! Magazine published Michael Jackson’s death photo on their cover. According to Snead (2009), OK! Magazine reportedly paid over $500,000 for the controversial "last" picture of Michael Jackson being carried on a stretcher, possibly dead. Why do they think that this would sell?- because since the death of the King of Pop, there are no images captured of him. Until this image was revealed, OK! Magazine was willing to pay a huge sum of money to obtain it, knowing it will be sensational.
Most reader and especially fans are furious about the act taken by OK! Magazine. Humanly, it is unethical to use a picture of a diseased for a cover. Let alone putting thoughts in the reader’s mind and spreading word of the dead.
According to Lester (1995), displaying violent, sensational images for economic reasons, violating a person's privacy before the judicial process can function, manipulating news-editorial pictures to alter their content, stereotyping individuals into pre-conceived categories and blurring the distinction between advertising and editorial messages were journalism concerns in 1895, are important topics in 1995 and will be carefully considered issues, no doubt, in 2095.
Lester, PM 1995, Photojournalism Ethics Timeless Issues, Fullerton.edu, viewed on 12 November 2009, http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/photoethics.html.
Snead, E 2009, OK! cover of Michael Jackson's death photo stirs controversy, Zap2It.com, viewed on 12 November 2009, http://blog.zap2it.com/thedishrag/2009/07/release-of-michael-jacksons-death-photo-stirs-controversy-.html
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