A New York newspaper is in trouble with local politicians and other members of the community after it took two photos and combined them without telling readers. Here’s the photo:
A report from the Southampton Press:
The photograph depicts Brookhaven Town Councilman Keith Romaine as being present at a July 2 news conference at Smith Point County Park that he did not, in fact, attend. It appeared in the July 8 issue of The South Shore Press, a weekly newspaper serving the Tri-Hamlet community.
The original photograph was distributed with a press release issued by Suffolk County Legislator Kate Browning’s office shortly after the press conference, at which county and town officials, including Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko, announced that they had reached a deal to replace and maintain missing buoys directing boaters from the Smith Point Marina to the Great South Bay.
A reprinted version of the press release also was published in The South Shore Press, although it was altered to add Mr. Romaine’s name twice to the article, depicting him as being present at the press conference and helping to broker the deal with Ms. Browning and Mr. Lesko. The photograph was retouched to include an image of Mr. Romaine, as if he were present when the photo at the press conference was taken.
Both Ms. Browning and Mr. Lesko said this week that Mr. Romaine did not contribute to the settlement…
The newspaper’s director of sales and marketing, Fred Towle Jr., a former Suffolk County legislator who resigned from his county post in 2003 after pleading guilty to receiving bribes in office, acknowledged this week that the paper altered the photograph. He defended the practice, noting that he had received competing press releases and photographs from both Mr. Romaine and Ms. Browning and was attempting to combine the two.
He said he saw nothing wrong with adding Mr. Romaine to the photograph. “Yes, we did it,” he said. “It’s not like we intentionally removed someone from a photo—that would have been questionable.”
Uh, wrong. The story includes quotes from ethics experts:
According to the code of ethics formulated by the Society for Professional Journalists, a not-for-profit organization that according to its website is “dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior,” one of the primary ethical standards for journalists is to “seek truth and report it.”
In that mission, The South Shore Press appears to have failed, according to Andy Schotz, chairman of the organization’s ethics committee.
“My breath was taken away when it was described to me,” Mr. Schotz said of the photograph. “You might have good intention, but we’re after truth. If it didn’t happen, you’re not reporting truth.”
He said that while many publications print photo illustrations in an attempt to make a story more clear, they typically take great pains to make it clear to the reader that it was not an actual photograph.
“Your responsibility is to the readers,” he said. “You don’t try to confuse your readers, you go out of your way to explain everything to your readers. There’s a trust relationship. The role that we have is to collect facts … people have faith in that and they rely on that.”
Jim Klurfeld, a visiting professor of journalism at Stony Brook University who served as the editorial page editor for Newsday for 40 years, agreed.
“If you’re going to print something for artistic reasons, it has to be labeled a photo illustration,” he said, recalling a time when Newsday editors took heat for a front-cover shot of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding on a skating rink together, an event that never actually occurred. “If there’s any confusion, you can’t use it. The only thing you have in a newspaper is your credibility. Why else would you read a newspaper if it’s not to get accurate information, the truth?”
Thanks, Steve!
