Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan didn’t twirl on the same Olympic ice until Thursday, but readers of New York Newsday might have thought otherwise.
The tabloid used computer technology to turn separate photographs of the skaters during practice into a single, seamless shot that dominated the front page Wednesday. A disclaimer in a caption at the bottom of the page stated the competitors “appear to skate together in this New York Newsday composite.”
It isn’t the first time that Newsday-or other publications-has altered photographs electronically, but the Feb. 16 cover has ignited a fierce journalistic debate.
If a picture is manipulated, is it a lie?
“There is a credibility crisis in journalism, and this is a good reason why,” said Reese Cleghorn, dean of the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. “This photo is a fake. But there’s an easy solution. Be honest. Put a line between these two pictures.”
Digital technology allows editors to move the component particles of a photograph-or several photographs-on a computer screen, making it easy to change an image in ways that are undetectable. Most journalists argue that a news photograph should never be altered, but the standards sometimes blur for feature photos and illustrations.
Of course, as long as there have been photos, there has been fudging. Blocking or blasting light on areas of a developing print is used routinely to lighten shadows or darken backgrounds. Before computers existed, airbrushes, paint and razor blades were employed to eliminate people or objects from photos.
But computer technology makes picture alteration so simple, it creates new hazards.
“It’s like unleashing the atom bomb,” said Arthur Hochstein, art director for Time magazine. “You can’t un-invent it. It’s there. The key is how it is applied, with what kind of care and consideration.”
Hochstein said he was fooled by the Newsday image, in part because it presented an event that news buildup had led the world to expect.
“It was jarring to me when I first looked at it,” Hochstein said. “My first thought was, `Wait a minute, how did Tonya get there so fast?’ “
Time often uses photographic montages as cover and inside illustrations, but Hochstein said readers understand they are magazine art devices and have different expectations for page 1 of a newspaper. Nevertheless, the Newsday composite controversy has prompted Time to begin to formulate a policy on when and how manipulated pictures can be used.
News photographs must “reflect events as we actually witnessed them,” but illustration photos do not necessarily have to meet a truth test, said Terry Schwadron, deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. Alterations must be evident, he said.
“It is easy to say there are no circumstances in which a photo should be altered, and then you’ll see one, like a particular cropping to make a point,” Schwadron said. “The question is whether any particular application is appropriate and matches the reader’s expectation.”
Donald Forst, Newsday’s New York editor, said such images as the Harding-Kerrigan composite can be used to “set the stage,” for a news story. Readers are sophisticated enough not to be deceived if a composite is labeled, he argued.
“This is not a false image,” said Forst, who is locked in a circulation battle with two other New York tabloids, The Daily News and New York Post. “I think it’s OK because it was clearly identified as a composite photo.”
Newsday set off another controversy in the mid-1980s when the Long Island edition multiplied a single image of a prototype fighter jet to make it appear that dozens of jets were flying in formation across a blue sky. The jets-which did not yet exist in quantity-were to illustrate a story that a local defense contractor, Grumman Corp., had won a Pentagon contract to build the fighters.
Perhaps the most famous example of such manipulation occurred in 1982, when National Geographic-a publication regarded as the bible of documentary photography-moved an ancient pyramid. A horizontal picture of a caravan of camels passing two pyramids did not fit the magazine’s vertical cover, so editors electronically nudged one pyramid about a quarter of an inch.
Magazine officials said in a statement Friday that the “isolated and ill-chosen use of electronic manipulation by National Geographic over a decade ago is not consistent with the magazine’s policy and will not be repeated.”
Kate Glassner Brainerd, a Denver freelance photo designer, was a design editor at National Geographic at the time.
“Somebody said, `Gee, lets just move it over.’ The technology just rolled over us. It was a tiny, tiny thing, but it was monumental in terms of the publication that did it,” she said.
“I don’t think any publication could have made a greater sacrifice in terms of credibilty. But that incident helped the industry by shedding light on the technology and what can happen.”
In 1986 the cover photograph for the book, “A Day in the Life of America,” billed as a documentary photo collection, was substantially altered. The moon, hills and a horseback rider were all moved around to make a horizontal picture work as a vertical.
And the White House complained in the late 1980s when the Chicago Tribune used a photo-illustration depicting Barbara Bush’s head on the body of a shapely model in a feature section. The artist was reprimanded, said Phil Greer, Tribune director of photography.
Misrepresentation also can occur. During the California wildfires last year, the Los Angeles Times says one of its staff photographers staged a widely used photograph of a firefighter dousing himself beside a pool, with a burning house in the background.
The photographer, who was suspended and reassigned, has denied that he posed the firefighter.
And just last month, ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts donned a winter coat to deliver a report from Capitol Hill. In fact, Roberts was standing inside the network’s Washington bureau, with a projected image of the Capitol behind her.
When such deceptions happen, the entire profession is damaged, said Stephen Isaacs, acting dean of the College of Journalism at Columbia University.
“The biggest problem that the newspaper business has today is the fact the people don’t believe it,” Isaacs said. “Journalism is about trying to find out the truth, and when you trick people and do things that are not the truth, you undermine that.”
Many news organizations are working to prevent abuse, with policies that restrict alteration of news photos except for burning, dodging or cropping. Such measures are critical to insure integrity, said Tom Stathis, Associated Press’ senior photo editor for North America.
“A picture that we have entered in the Pulitzer contest this year is of a rally in South Africa,” Stathis said. “Shots are fired, and one of the demonstrators is just flipped upside down. It looks like he’s standing on his head.
“If this trend continues, people would look at that photo and wonder, `Did they stand him on his head?’ “
