Critical thinking

THOMAS H. WHEELER

Thomas Wheeler is the former Editor-in-Chiefof Guitar Player magazine and author of several books on guitars, including American Guitars and The Stratocaster Chronicles. In 1991 he joined the faculty of the School ofJournalism and Communication at the University of Oregon, where he won the Marshall Award for innovative teaching. His research explores the ethical dimensions of image manipulation in nonfiction media, and he has spoken to numerous ethics and professional groups on these topics. He is the author ofa textbook, Phototruth or Photofiction: Ethics and Media Imagery In The Digital Age (2002) from which "The Digital Media Landscape: Liquid Imagery, Shaky Credibility" is excerpted.

Getting Started

If you have ever used a computer to manipulate a digital image, you know how easily and undetectably this can be done. Have you ever altered a photo or video to make a face look better, change the background, or remove someone from the scene? Why do you think these photographic "tricks" are so popular? Can you tell when an image has been altered? What examples of manipulated images in magazines, newspapers, on TV or the Web can you think of? Do you believe that the public needs to be made aware when this is taking place? Should a manipulated image be labeled as such or do you feel that this is unnecessary because in the end "it's only a picture"?

High-tech deception is today's technology, not tomorrow's.

—The Dallas Morning Newsl

t may be comforting to cling to old categories of photography, to assure ourselves that whatever happens outside the field of "photojournalism" will have little impact on the credibility of

IJim Wright, "Movie Plot Should Dog Wags in White House," The Dallas Morning News (March 1, 1998): 7J.

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news photos. However, we will take the opposite view. While our primary concern is journalistic photography, and while people do indeed bring different expectations to different media (a daily newspaper vs. a sci-fi movie, for example), public faith in "phototruth" is surely affected by everyday experiences with viewing and interpreting visual media in a variety of forms—especially considering the much-decried blurring of lines between news, public relations, advertising, and entertainment. To better grasp the threat to the credibility of still photography in newspapers and magazines, it will serve us well to briefly explore developments in broadcast television, cable, film, computer programs, personal game toys, and so on.

On occasion, we examine even tabloids such as National Enquirer and satirical magazines such as Spy, not because they are typically included in discussions of serious journalism (obviously, they are not) but because they are part of the digital-media landscape and because the flood of photofiction from myriad sources will likely influence how viewers perceive mass-media images of all kinds—including journalistic photos.

NO GOING BACK

"The digital revolution is over," according to the November/December 1997 issue of American Photo magazine, and while the media's adoption of these technologies will evolve for some time, the claim that digital media are here to stay is indeed beyond debate. Professional photographers and publications embrace digital cameras and processes with increasing frequency. That same issue of American Photo quoted a commercial photographer as saying, "A couple of years ago I couldn't imagine what I would do with a computer; now I can't imagine what I would do without one." The magazine concluded, "The paradigm has shifted, and there's no going back."2

Most photographs seen in news magazines and newspapers with substantial circulations are either created by digital processes or converted into digital data during production-3 What

2David Schonauer, "The Future of Photography 1997," American Photo (November/December 1997): 47.

-Edgar Shaobua Huang, "Readers' Perception of Digital Alteration and TruthValue in Documentarv Photographs," submitted in partial fulfillment for a Ph.D. degree, School of Journalism, Indiana University (October 1999): 2—3.

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makes this ethically significant is an essential quality of digital data: its susceptibility to easy, unlimited, and virtually undetectable manipulation.

SHIFTS IN AUTHORITY

While recent discussion has understandably addressed dazzling 5 new technologies, another factor in the new age is a shift in authority. People making decisions about how or whether images should be manipulated are increasingly part of what might be called the computer-graphics culture and are not steeped in the traditional values of photojournalism, or journalism of any kind. This is especially true of many communicators who find the Internet better suited to their tastes and goals than established print or broadcast media.[footnoteRef:1] [1: "ControI over [the moment, composition, light, color] has been transferred from the photographer to the photo lab." Donald R. Katz, "Why Pictures Lie," Esquire (June 1990): 94; "These people [art directors and designers] have not been taught the traditional, classic values and goals of documentary photojournalism," George Wedding of The Sacramento Bee quoted in J.D. Lasica, "Photographs That Lie: The Ethical Dilemma of Digital Retouching," Washington Journalism Review (June 1989): 24: see also, Paul Lester, editor, "NPPA Code of Ethics," NPPA Special Report: The Ethics of Photojournalism (Durham, NC: National Press Photographers Association, 1990): 130—31.]

Moreover, while photographers have long lamented their lack of control over how their images are published, their influence has diminished even further in recent years. Because a single image can be fragmented into components more easily than ever (the beach, the palm tree, and the moon can be isolated, sold to separate clients, and perhaps later recombined in different ways), the notion of ownership of a photo faces redefinition; some observers suggest it is already outdated. [footnoteRef:2] One complicating factor is [2: "In the digital age, when images can be lifted from the Intemet or scanned from books and magazines, the notion of copyright is simply antiquated." David Schonauer, "In Camera" column, American Photo (July/August 1999): 32. Some people disagree, such as members of the FPG (Freelance Photographers' Guild), which sued Newsdav because the New York daily scanned a James Porto photoillustration, then added, deleted, and recombined various elements, and published it without attribution or permission. Newsdav settled out of court. Newsday attorney Bruce Keller said, "This is a simple copyright issue, not a new technology issue," but FPG President Barbara Roberts noted that digital technology had made the theft of images much easier. Akiko Busch, "Stock and Secuñty: FPG vs. Newsdav," Print (November/December 1995):48.]

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the Internet, which has made it almost effortless to steal, reproduce, and redistribute copyrighted material—text and images alike.[footnoteRef:3] [3: "The ease at which written material can be copied and distributed on the Internet has made it possible to steal copyrighted works in staggering proportions." Manha L. Stone, "Copyright Questions Abound on the Web," Editor & Publisher (December 12, 1998): 44.]

IS A PHOTO "WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE"?

Even the word "photograph" itself may be on its way to the boneyard of outmoded concepts. Nature photographer Art Wolfe is well known for his "photo" of a zebra herd, some members of which were digitally cloned. He said in 1997, "For me, making a digital photo is like making a watercolor. . It's not a painting, and it's not a photo. It's something altogether new."[footnoteRef:4][footnoteRef:5]Professor Shiela Reaves reported that the Meredith Corporation's director of production told magazine educators, "I don't consider a photograph to be a photograph anymore. It's something to work with."8 [4: David Schonauer, "Showcase: An Wolfe," American Photo (November/December 1997): 56.] [5: Shiela Reaves, "Digital Alteration of Photographs in Magazines: An Examination of the Ethics," a paper presented at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Washington, D.C., August 1989, 8. See also Shiela Reaves, "Photography, Pixels, and New Technology: Is There a 'Paradigm Shift'?" a paper presented at the annual convention of AEJMC, Washington, D.C., August 1989. 9Reaves, "Photography, Pixels," 9.]

Indeed, once a digital image has been altered, the altered version becomes, in a very real sense, the new "original." Roger Ressmeyer sold a photo that was subsequently altered. "People want the altered image, and I don't have it," he reported. "My original is worthless "9

However we might define a photograph today, most of us have grown up thinking of a photo as being more fixed, more tangible, more real than merely "something to work with." Is the Meredith Corporation production director's quote a glimpse of things to come? Is a photograph no longer a photograph? Is it instead, as Kodak's 1996 advertising slogan promised, "whatever you want it to be"?

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CHANGING ASSUMPTIONS

Larger questions abound. What is the future of photographic 10 credibility and, by extension, the credibility of all visual media, in an age when even amateur shutterbugs have access to increasingly affordable digital cameras (from 1995 to 1997, sales of these items increased by about 700 percent) and to software designed for, as one 1997 advertisement put it, "everything from retouching pimples to removing an ex-spouse"? Signposts in the digital landscape:

· In the wake of the September 1 1, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., actor/director Ben Stiller ordered the digital erasing of the World Trade Center towers from scenes of Manhattan's skyline in his film Zoolander.

· Aki, the digitally animated female protagonist of the sci-fi movie Final Fantasy, was selected over real-life models and starlets to become the cover girl for Maxim magazine's "Hot 100" supplement in 2001.

· During the 2001 elections in Britain, the Labor Party associated their opponent, William Hague, with Margaret Thatcher by distributing composite posters that pictured Hague's face with Ms. Thatcher's hair and earrings.

· Telecommunications giant Alcatel produced a TV ad in 2001 that used footage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech. A portion of the doctored version (in vintage black & white, complete with authentic looking scratches and flecks) seemed to show Dr. King speaking not to the familiar teeming throng but rather to a deserted Washington Mall.

· At the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, downhill skiers raced against the clock, one at a time; with new synchronized replay technology, broadcasters later superimposed 'ghost" images of two competitors so viewers could compare their progress at various stages of their respective runs.

· During speed skating events in the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, the nationalities of competitors were identified by flags digitally inserted beneath the ice in their respective lanes. Two years pre'äously, digital flags on the bottom of the pool identified the nationalities of Olympic swimmers; the technology is so sophisticated that one could see surface waves and shimmering reflections above the flags.

· The New York Times reported in 2000 that fictional websites were increasingly popular. Some offer no actual services or

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products but are graphically indistinguishable from those that do.

· Webbie Tookay posed for a feature in the October 1999 Details magazine, pitched Nokia telephones to Latin American consumers, and was slated to join a virtual band; the digital creation of animator Steven Stahlberg, Tookay is "managed" by the Illusion 2K agency, which represents virtual models.

· Yearbook photos are sometimes manipulated by students (or their parents). Aside from cosmetic touch-ups to photos of themselves, a photographer's representative said in 1999 that customers view photos of other people, then say, "I like that smile, that pose, that background or those clothes." Aspects of these details can be incorporated into the customer's own portrait.

· Hewlett Packard encourages its software customers to "crop and manipulate images—all as creativity dictates.'

· Tiger Electronics introduced the Clone Zone and Dear Diary "electronic organizers," boasting that "kids can even morph the photos!"

· With Mattel's Me2Cam digital video camera/CD Rom system, a child "can actually step into the computer"; its features include a "virtual fun house that distorts her image!"

· Software now permits computer operators to add images of new products into old film or live video feeds. Stars in classic movies from bygone eras could appear to be holding or using the latest brand-name products. Signs, billboards or other commercial messages could also be integrated, the results looking as if the inserts had been pan of the original scene. In one remarkable example of "virtual advertising," a Blockbuster videocassette box was digitally placed on a table in an episode of the "Seven Days" television series. 1 1 The March 17,

IOCree Lawson (AP), "Retouching Yearbook Pictures Catches on," The RegisterGuard, Eugene, Oregon (June 25, 1999): I IA.

I l ''You are seeing the first glimpse of the future of advertising," according to a spokesman for Aegis Group P.L.C. From an advertisers point of view, one advantage to the new strategy is that it allows updated or entirely new products to be placed in the same film or video at different times or for different audiences. Stuart Elliott, "Real or Virtual? You Call It: Digital Sleight of Hand Can Put Ads Almost Anywhere," New York Tunes (October I, 1999): Cl.

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1999, episode of that series featured the live-video insertion of "electronic product images" for Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and other sponsors in background scenes.

· Syndicators of the television show Law and Order announced in 2001 they were working on agreements to provide postproduction insertion of images of logos, signs, and products into previously filmed scenes. Payments would be in addition to fees advertisers paid for regular ads. A spokesman for Princeton Video Image (PVI) said, "You could sell a box of cereal in the kitchen one [airing], and dish soap in the next." PVI's website explains that the distribution of these "virtual insertions" could also be allocated by region: "For example, the sitcom Frasier can have a can of Coke on his living room table in the Northeast region broadcasts, and a can of Diet Coke on his living room table for the West Coast broadcast region. A broadcaster can show a Seinfeld rerun with a box of Corn Flakes on Jerry's kitchen table one time and a box of Special K the next time the show aired."

· Racing cars are typically plastered with sponsors' logos, but during portions of the Fox Sports Network broadcast of NASCAR's 2001 Budweiser Shootout, some vehicles looked oddly blank; the network had digitally removed the logos from some of the cars whose advertisers had failed to pay Fox for displaying them.

· With DivorceX software from Canada's Western Pro Imaging Labs, "divorcees can now eradicate their previous partners from photographs without resorting to a scissor job. The technology can also make people thinner, younger, and can remove double chins or scars.' Do-it-yourself photo portrait booths offer the option of "Foto Fantasy" digital manipulation.

· Kai's Photo Soap software permits amateur photographers to fix their pictures by, among other alterations, removing objects in the background.

· Kodak's Image Magic theater kiosks let moviegoers create digital posters of their "appearances" in Hollywood films.

· Introduced in 1998, the Game Boy Camera costs only $49, is marketed to kids, and invites users to "take snapshots of your friends . and make them a part of the action as their faces become the characters."

There may be nothing unethical about these practices, but can even newspaper photography maintain its authenticity in a visual environment where viewers are bombarded with images in which

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fanciful dreamscapes appear to be as real as any photograph, hu mans are "morphed" into phantasms, and dead celebrities come back to life to mingle with contemporary actors, to hawk beer, to dance with vacuum cleaners? [footnoteRef:6] [6: 1n television commercials aired in 1997, footage from three Fred Astaire movies was combined with film of Dirt Devil products. Diet Coke ads seemed to capture Paula Abdul dancing with Gene Kelly, and Elton John performing with Louis Armstrong. Sean Means, "Altered Images: Photo Technology Creates a Reality Thatg Not There," Salt Lake Tribune (March 3, 1997): BI.]

DECLINING CONFIDENCE

We may even be approaching a time when the public will assume that unless otherwise specified a journalistic photo is likely to have been altered. In the aftermath of its highly controversial— and highly altered—1994 0.J. Simpson cover, Time's managing editor felt compelled to assure readers that certain other photos in the magazine had not been altered. [footnoteRef:7] The statement was among the most revealing of the many comments made in the wake of the Simpson debacle; previously, no such promises had been deemed necessary in the venerable news magazine. [7: James R. Gaines, "To Our Readers," lime (July 4, 1994):4.]

The implications of increasing photofakery are particularly significant in light of a declining confidence in journalism itself. Newsweek's July 20, 1998, issue reported, "The public's faith in the press may be at a new low," [footnoteRef:8] and in September 1998 the American Journalism Review devoted several feature articles to recent, highly publicized ethical lapses. [footnoteRef:9] (Even 60 Minutes was duped into airing a phony "documentary" featuring actors, misleading locations, and staged events. [footnoteRef:10]) [8: Evan Thomas and Gregory L. Vistica, "Fallout from a Media Fiasco," Newsweek (July 20, 1998): 24. In addition, a July 4, 1999, Associated Press story reported the results of a telephone survey taken by Vanderbilt University's First Amendment Center. The center's ombudsman, Paul McMasters, said, "The news media is in deep trouble with the American public." AP, "Survey Indicates Public Fed Up With News Media," The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon (July 4, 1999): 5A.] [9: Judith Sheppard, "Playing Defense: Is Enough Being Done To Prevent Future Journalistic Embarrassments?" American Journalism Review (September 1998).] [10: AP, December 7, 1998.]

Another relevant trend is visual imagery's increasing dominance over the printed word. As NYU professor and critic Neil

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Postman said, "The environment created by language, and the printed word, has now been moved to the periphery of the culture and at its center, the image has taken over. [footnoteRef:11] [11: "Consuming Images," The Public Mind: Image and Reality in America (PBS video, 1989).]

BEYOND PRINT MEDIA

Our challenge extends beyond newspapers and magazines to broadcast, cable, film, video, and online media. All of the imagemanipulation techniques available to print media have analogs in digital video and film editing, [footnoteRef:12] providing new opportunities not only to Hollywood studios but also to news organizations—or for that matter anyone with access to a digital camera and a computer. On a wintry January day in 1994, bundled-up ABC television correspondent Cokie Roberts was introduced to viewers as reporting "from Capitol Hill"; in fact, she was in a presumably comfy Washington studio, standing before a projected image of the Capitol building (the network apologized). [footnoteRef:13] [12: "Video will go the same way as film as newsrooms turn to new computer technology . . . much of the equipment and technology now exists." Lou Prato, "Coming Up: Digital Pictures at I I," American Journalism Review (July/August 1994): 48.] [13: "Dafts and Laurels" column, Columbia Journalism Review (May/June 1994): http://www.cjr.org/year/94/3/d_I.asp. 20Wright, 7J. See also Prato, 48.]

The ABC/Robefts trickery was decidedly low-tech compared to 15 what's on the horizon. The Dallas Morning News reported that with the latest software, "news anchors can do their stuff on camera in a bare, blue room . . . the whole set is dubbed in digitally, to show any kind of style, scenery, furniture, you name it."20 Producer/writer Andrew Niccol was quoted in 2001 as saying, ''VeÏY soon we will be able to turn on our television sets and not know if the presenter is real or fake, and frankly we won't care." In one example, an animated "cyber anchor" named Ananova appeared on a website to read actual news and weather reports. According to the May 7 , 2001 , New York Times (p. B8), "Within weeks after her debut last year, Ananova was besieged by requests for personal appearances, calls from Hollywood agents and record companies asking to sign her."

In his classic work, 1984, George Orwell offered this description of the ultimate totalitarian state's propaganda mechanism: "There were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their

194 [footnoteRef:14]Thomas H. Wheeler [14: Don Fitzpatrick, "Shoptalk," Don Fitzpatrick Associates, http://www.tvspy.com, October 8, 1996.]

typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs." One wonders what Orwell might have thought of this 1996 announcement for Reality 3-1) software (note that the product is directed not to advertisers but to news professionals):

EarthWatch . . . introduces a revolutionary new product line. Reality 3-1) is the next step in graphics, permitting real-time animations for weather and news [providing] a simulated helicopter perspective with a photorealistic Virtual City Skyline. .

The system will simulate fires, explosions, and permit the user to re-create accidents in near real-time, getting compelling visuals on the air . . . before video arrives on the scene. With a virtual set, your weather or news talent can be in a simulated 3-D landscape, walking knee-deep through fronts, storms, or hurricanes, or walking through your virtual skyline.

Videographers have long been able to restructure raw footage to create new "realities"; now, with computer modeling, vocal sampling, and re-animation techniques they can literally put words in a speaker's mouth. The faces of actors James Garner and Jack Lemmon were digitally "pasted" onto the bodies of stunt men on horseback in the film My Fellow Americans.[footnoteRef:15] In Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace, nonanimated characters existing only in the digital realm "interacted" with real actors filmed in studios and on location; also, a live actor's expression from one take was digitally grafted onto his face in another take.[footnoteRef:16] The technology that allowed Tom Hanks to chat briefly with John F. Kennedy in Forrest Gump has been refined; if focus groups decree that the public wants to see a romantic epic starring Leonardo Di Caprio opposite a teenaged Elizabeth Taylor, technicians may soon be able to render it on computers. [15: See Andy Seiler, "Technology Puts Fiction in 'Contact' with Reality," USA Today (July 30, 1997): 5D.] [16: ''This may be the first step toward a cinematic future in which virtual actors replace flesh-and-blood ones. . " David A. Kaplan, "The Selling of Star Wars," Newsweek (May 17, 1999): 60.]

Consider the implications of applying these technologies to a faked newscast, political speech, disaster announcement, or declaration of war. "In a few years, anybody will be able to get in

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there and manipulate images," says Ken Ralston, special effects supervisor on the films Contact (which seemed to portray President Clinton speaking about events in the film), Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? "It's going to be everywhere, in every facet of our lives. [footnoteRef:17] [17: Kaplan, 60.]

With the relatively low costs of video gear and easy-to-use software, even individuals working on a shoestring can make reasonably professional looking videos brimming with special effects. Given the Internet, as well as an expected increase in satellite transmissions and the advent of cable modems and multiple digital television channels, those videos will soon be distributed worldwide with ease—and perhaps without whatever ethical safeguards might have been attached had they emerged through conventional channels [footnoteRef:18] Then again, the World Wide Web may facilitate a new kind of photo-based storytelling whose layers of meaning and richness of context are scarcely approached by traditional photojournalism. [18: Bruce Haring, "Digital Video: A Movie Star in the Making," USA Today (July 1 , 1998): 5D.]

SUMMARY

Digital technologies continue to revolutionize all mass media, not only exposing the public to more manipulated images but also giving them more opportunities to do the manipulating themselves, even in their everyday, personal photographic experiences. Some consequences of all this remain unclear, but certainly the assumption that "seeing is believing" is under assault amid this environment of elastic imagery.

Questions

1. Wheeler informs us that since most images in the media are digital, they are susceptible to "easy unlimited, and virtually undetectable manipulation" (paragraph 4). What do you think is the best example that he provides to make his case? What others do you know about that he does not mention? How do you think these changes affect us as viewers?

2. Imagine watching a news story on television and finding out that the images were digitally created to present the story in a vivid way. Would you find this acceptable because it would help tell the story or unacceptable because it is fake? Explain the reasons for your reaction.

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3. According to Wheeler, what special problems does the Internet present in relation to images? Do you think that images on the Web have a different impact on us than images in print media?

4 Wheeler predicts that "we may even be approaching a time when the public will assume that unless otherwise specified a journalistic photo is likely to have been altered" (paragraph I I). When does it matter that you know if an image has been manipulated? Always, sometimes, never? Do images of people in the news as opposed to those in entertainment contexts seem to matter more?

5. Find a picture in a newspaper, news magazine, an e-zine, or in a conventional magazine that you think has been manipulated in some way. Write a brief essay in which you explain what aspects you think have been manipulated and why and whether these alterations matter to you.