[Grovenet] Fwd: Oh NO, not Flat Fatima!

[Steven]

If the writer wrote something like that in an instance where the items were
not found, it would be a lie. Is it OK if they placed a dead child's body in
the shot? Or is it OK for someone to pose as a dead person in a shot, for
dramatic effect?
When the pictures or story is altered by the photog/writer, it begs the
question if the event 'indeed' happened at all.
If it is OK to make up stories, then what is the purpose of news at all?
I was a news photog. At a plane crash, a previous reporter and photog had
pulled items from the wreckage, looking for possible identification and
such. We 'discovered' a stack of personal items near the plane in a
partially burned state. I took some footage of this and the reporter did a
short standup (more like a squat) next to it.
After airing the piece at 6pm, an official noted to the station that he was
present when the other station reporter and he had removed the items. We
promptly re-edited the story to remove this section because it was not true.
Dispite the fact that we found the site exactly as reported, the other
reporter/photg did not take pictures of it nor portray the items as part of
a staged crash site.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com]On
> Behalf Of Ron D'Eau Claire
> Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 10:21 AM
> To: 'Forest Grove local interests list'
> Subject: RE: [Grovenet] Fwd: Oh NO, not Flat Fatima!
>
>
> A writer might write, "A teddy bear, covered with slime and gore,
> was found
> in the rubble, surely torn from its little owner's grip just as
> the life was
> torn from the child's body by the collapsing building..." How is that
> different from moving a toy to a more photogenic spot for an image? And
> then, some photogs might reason that if everyone knows there were
> toys that
> have been removed, why not add one for effect since they are not
> handy now?
> Does the fact of doing that communicate anything different from
> the sobering
> thought that young lives were, indeed, crushed out in that rubble?
>
> The reporter is always part of the story, no matter how we'd like to think
> otherwise. > http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet