Ethical standards like these have been put into place in newsrooms across the country to assure readers of the continued integrity of news photographs, despite the digital revolution in contemporary photojournalism. Adherence to these principles addresses what news professionals consider the potential for abuse introduced by computer imaging technology. The ethical debates spawned by the widespread adoption of digital imaging have rarely encompassed what takes place prior to the process of photo editing—decisions made by photographers in the act of making news pictures. If, as Dunn's response suggests, photojournalists simply record what the camera sees, then only willful acts of intervention subvert news photographs. But photographs are not simple records of the real world in front of the camera, and the ethical codes enacted to allay readers' fears of overt manipulation cannot assure the photograph's objective status.

Photojournalism is distinctive for its dual rhetoric which simultaneously asserts the objectivity of news photographs while praising the skill and artistry of its best practitioners. It is a field of endeavor in which competing, contradictory claims coexist in apparent harmony. Why are individual photographers singled out for special recognition if their cameras do the work? Photojournalists perform their task with conspicuous skill, under difficult conditions, facing tight deadlines. They tacitly make choices among lenses, decide how to respond to lighting conditions, choose what will be included in and left out of the frame, and select the appropriate moment to make an exposure. These choices, among others made in the moment of shooting the image, contribute to the way in which the objects and events in front of the camera appear. Institutionally sponsored competitions reward photojournalists for their creativity, enhancing photographers' reputations among their colleagues. But the recognition earned in monthly clips contests occupies the backstage, while photographers and editors alike spotlight the objectivity of the image for public appreciation, linking photography with truth, not artistic self-expression.

Like newsmakers working in other media, photojournalists have developed their own set of strategic rituals that allow them to lay claim to objectivity (Schwartz, 1992). The codes of professional conduct to which photojournalists adhere guide decisions regarding both photographic form and content. Photographers working within other professional arenas make different claims for the images they produce. The history of photography narrates the ascension of the photographic image to the status of art, linking art photography with painting, sculpture, printmaking and the like. While art photographers may claim that their work offers truth of some kind, they make no claims to objective fact. Advertising photography has a tenuous relationship with truth and is most often linked with the desired rather than the real, emotions instead of facts.

Comparing the characteristics attributed to photographs produced in differing institutional contexts suggests the important role played by the institutions themselves in fixing public perceptions of photographic representations. All photographs are made by photographers, and through the battery of decisions they make all photographs encode the photographer's point of view and the institutional requirements constraining his or her activities. The questions probed here are the following: how has journalism framed the news photograph to appear to have excised the photographer's viewpoint, yielding an objective, machine-made reflection of the world; and toward what end has this view been constructed and perpetuated? An examination of this kind necessarily follows some of the same paths cut by journalism historians tracing the emergence of objectivity in the press (see especially Schudson, 1978; Schiller, 1981), but studying the specific role of illustrations in newsmaking maps a slightly different course. The inclusion of pictures in the press generated a distinctive set of issues concerning the role of images as vehicles of information, and attitudes towards images themselves require examination. Rather than review the history of photojournalism from the vantage point of exceptional images or valiant attempts at reportage (following the paradigm of art histories and most recent histories of photojournalism) this chapter shifts the frame to investigate the role played by newspaper publishers in the establishment of photojournalism as an objective reportorial strategy.

The Illustrated Press

Many histories tracing the origins of photojournalism start their narratives with the emergence of the Illustrated London News on May 14, 1842. The number of wood engraved illustrations appearing on its pages, and the regularity with which they were published has earned the newspaper its designated ancestral status. In his social history of photography Robert Taft (1938) also indicates a line of succession of illustrated newspapers, moving from England to Europe then across the Atlantic to the United States: L'Illustration, published in Paris in 1843; the Illustrirte Zeitung, published in Leipzig, also in 1843; and in the United States Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, beginning on December 15, 1855; followed by Harper's Weekly in 1857, the New York Daily Graphic in 1873, and the World in 1883. While Taft's account may be selective, it suggests the rapid diffusion of illustrated periodicals to Western urban centers. Although the Illustrated London News starts most historical accounts, its approach was built upon other popular periodicals, the illustrated weeklies preceding it. The Illustrated News attempted to stake out its own territory in contradistinction to its predecessors, while simultaneously incorporating the commercially successful strategies they employed. Understanding the attitudes and values encoded in earlier illustrated publications, whether devoted to information or entertainment, helps situate the subsequent approach adopted by the News.

Two recently published histories aid attempts to understand the cultural milieu shaping the illustrated periodicals of the mid-nineteenth century: Celina Fox's Graphic Journalism in England During the 1830s and 1840s, and Patricia Anderson's The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790-1860. As they trace the history of the Penny Magazine both authors illuminate the purposes initially conceived for mass-reproduced visual images. During the early nineteenth century, Anderson argues, elite art images were virtually inaccessible to working people, and visual images of all kinds remained marginal to the daily experience of the working class. A limited range of published materials included wood engravings, and these illustrations were generally considered quite crude. Popular religious tracts and self-help chapbooks, literary entertainment published in chapbooks or on broadsides, and political materials appearing in pamphlet or broadsheet format might all be accompanied by illustrations.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), an organization devoted to social reform, published a monthly series of self-help tracts known as the "Library of Useful Knowledge." Their numbers offered a compendium of cheaply purchased, informative, morally uplifting and politically innocuous literary and pictorial works. The Library of Useful Knowledge was produced for the SDUK by Charles Knight, an author, editor, and publisher. Knight himself espoused reformist views compatible with those of the SDUK, and building upon his relationship with the organization, his social networks, and his business acumen, he proposed that the Society undertake a new, ambitious publishing project. With the sponsorship of the SDUK, Knight produced the first edition of the Penny Magazine on March 31, 1832.

The SDUK hoped its periodical publications would compete with and counteract the disruptive influence of the radical political press. Increased urbanization during the nineteenth century had created both new prospects and problems for elites. Urban population growth provided a conveniently accessed labor force as well as a centralized cache of consumers for manufactured goods and popular periodicals. But the perceived potential for labor unrest and social upheaval caused elites concern. Partisan periodicals were construed a threat to the established social order insofar as they disseminated revolutionary ideas among the working class and could conceivably incite oppositional political action. Despite government efforts to eliminate or at least to control dissident publications, an illegal radical press emerged and flourished nonetheless. Publications like the Penny Magazine and its successors, the Art-Union, the Pictorial Times and, later, the Illustrated London News, offered an alternative to the partisan press and attempted to present transcendent, universal values that would unite rather than split the populace. Many believed the civilizing influence of art could be used to quell political unrest.

Knight considered delivering high quality wood engraved images to the working class a "mission into the field of popular education" (Anderson, 1991:53) as well as a potentially profitable business venture. Knight believed that "intellectual culture" did not only depend on books and lectures. Pictures provided "eye-knowledge" that was "sometimes more instructive than words." Not just any kind of picture would do; Knight particularly advocated using illustrations that reproduced fine art works. Anderson quotes Knight, who wrote:

"Faithful and spirited copies of the greatest productions of PAINTING and SCULPTURE"…were among the most "valuable accessories of knowledge [and] instruments of education" (Anderson, 1991:70).

Anderson argues that the introduction of such illustrated periodicals fundamentally altered working people's day to day experience by opening up access to art images once viewed almost exclusively by elites.

Other educational reformers of the mid-nineteenth century shared Knight's views and envisioned additional pragmatic uses for the fine arts. The government's Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures of 1835-1836 had announced its conclusion that products of British manufacture compared poorly with French, and the committee recommended universal access to art education in order to improve the quality of industrial design and raise consumers' standards of taste. Wood engravings reproduced in affordable penny weeklies provided an ideal vehicle for disseminating art to a mass audience. Utilized in this way, art served industry and was simultaneously (and not uncontroversially) wrested from the limited confines of elite arenas of discourse. Art could both elevate the quality of British manufactured goods and the moral and intellectual character of the populace. Exemplifying this sentiment, the following passage appeared in the pages of the Penny Magazine:

By diffusing a love of nature and of art amongst the people, the higher faculties of the mind will be awakened, and the impulses under which men seek for excitement in vicious indulgences, will be more easily overcome (quoted in Fox, 1988:9).

The Penny Magazine quickly achieved an unprecedented circulation. By December 1832, nine months after the appearance of its first issue, the Penny Magazine's circulation reached 200,000; its actual readership numbered 1 million (Anderson, 1991:52). Its popularity built upon Knight's prior successes as a publisher. He had at his command a mechanized publishing facility, and he had established and maintained a network of wholesalers and retailers through which to distribute the magazine. And the regularly published illustrations proved to have enormous public appeal. According to Anderson (1991) the Penny Magazine was the earliest inexpensive serial publication to fully realize the commercial possibilities of mass reproduced imagery. Entrepreneurs noted the success of the Penny Magazine and it spawned a succession of imitators, publications which eventually cut into the magazine's circulation and endangered its existence. In 1845 the Penny Magazine ceased publication.

Anderson identifies a "second generation" of illustrated periodicals, published without affiliation to sponsoring organizations like the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The Penny Magazine's successors were purely commercial endeavors, and their publishers' perceptions of popular public taste dictated editorial policy. Knight characterized the shift in this way:

The struggling benefactor of the masses, who long labored in vain at the establishment of a useful and entertaining serial for the working multitude, is now displaced by the wealthy projector who has carved a handsome fortune out of a penny miscellany, and who contemplates a seat in parliament at least, as the crown of his golden toils (Anderson, 1991:84)

While the second generation illustrated periodicals built upon the popularity of the Penny Magazine, initially invoking some of the same rhetoric found in its pages, Anderson notes an important distinction. The reformer's emphasis on art gave way to light entertainment; moral instruction and intellectual enlightenment of whatever kind would be delivered through an amalgam of illustrated literary fiction (tales of romance, crime, and intrigue), fashion news, recipes, and more overtly educational material, like articles on art, science, or current events. The new periodicals' shift in focus and the demise of the Penny Magazine, shifted art back to the elite domain from which Knight had wrested it. But even though reproductions of art works decreased, art was still invoked in order to enhance the new periodicals' reputations as worthy reading fare, suitable for a broad-based audience including elites.

From Art to Fact

Like many other second generation periodicals, the Illustrated London News followed the lead set by the Penny Magazine. But the Illustrated London News distinguished itself from popular publications (sometimes referred to as "penny dreadfuls") that pandered to the basest instincts of contemporary readers by providing a steady diet of indelicate stories detailing crimes, scandals, acts of debauchery and the like, complete with vivid illustrations. The Illustrated London News claimed the moral high ground, positioning itself as a periodical suitable for the drawing room table. The News pledged to observe proper decorum, concentrating on domestic matters and providing "homely illustration." It would eschew the partisan politics of the radical press and remain neutral on the matters it reported. The publishers of the News went so far as to assert that the English populace was too devoted to factional politics, a diagnosis justifying the diversion it provided: a detour to the "only practically explored high places of religion, morality and literature" (Fox, 1988:281). And, like its predecessor, the Penny Magazine, the Illustrated London News aspired to elevate and educate its intended readership, both the audience for so-called "trashy" periodicals and readers of the "quality" press, through art. The Illustrated London News stated its position in this way:

We perceived that a love of art, not merely for its own sake, but from a deep and dearly-cherished consciousness of those high aims which its cultivation will promote and perpetuate, was growing up in the national soul of our beloved country; we determined, at all hazards, to lend our aid towards the work of directing this love of art to those high and noble purposes which we believe it best qualified to subserve—to plunge into the great ocean of human affairs, and to employ the pencil and burin in the work of illustrating not only the occurrences of the day, but the affections, the passions, the desires of men, and the faculties of the immortal soul…Conscious of our power for good or evil, we shall pursue the course of which we have hitherto given our earnest, unbiassed [sic] by temporary considerations, unawed by the frowns of power, from what-ever quarter directed, and hoping one day to see realized that ever-glorious prophecy of "Peace on earth, good will to men (Illustrated London News, May 27, 1843, quoted in Fox, 1988:281-2).

The meaning of "art", in the terms set forth here, diverges importantly from the use of the term by Charles Knight. To the publisher of the Penny Magazine art was represented by painting, sculpture, and architecture; wood engraved reproductions served as the artistic vehicle through which legitimized works of art could be reproduced and therefore accessed by a general readership. The Illustrated London News makes a rather different claim. In the service of presenting news, art refers to the wood engravings themselves, the product of a collaborative effort among sketch artists and the draftsmen who translated them into engraved plates for the press. Artists employed by the newspaper created their own first-hand representations of contemporary subjects:

the pageant splendour of royalty, the homelier festivals of the people, the spirit of public improvement and scientific advancement, , the "false" glories of war, the great creations of genius in architecture, painting and sculpture, steam transit by land and sea, the growth of our colonies, the "master minds" of the age (Fox, 1988:312).

The Illustrated London News characterized its illustrations as "investing the realities of life with a superior interest, by the aid of the exhaustless and ennobling graces of art." Rather than representing art through wood engravings, the illustrations published in the Illustrated London News were themselves presented as works of art.

The characteristics attributed to art warrant further scrutiny. Nineteenth century educational reformers advocated widespread access to art based on the belief that art had an ennobling effect on all who view it, elevating both the intellectual and moral level of its audience. This belief, in turn, built upon the view that visual art is directly perceived and universally comprehensible, and can therefore transform anyone exposed to its influence. Made accessible to the public, art could contribute to the common good, rally its audience behind transcendent social values, and thereby diminish class conflict. Belief in the universality of the visual image was tied to its fidelity: artists' representations provided objective transcriptions of the external world. Consonant with this view, the Illustrated London News asserted the factuality of its wood engravings:

The public will have henceforth under their glance and within their grasp, the very form and presence of events as they transpire, in all their substantial reality, and with evidence visible as well as circumstantial (May 14, 1842; quoted in Fox, 1988:12).

When a new Chancellor was installed at Cambridge, the Illustrated London News announced its ability to represent the affair without any hint of political bias, as this description indicates:

uncontaminated by party spirit—in a word, with truth, and without bias—to present to its readers pictorial records of all the high festivals of the nation (July 9, 1842; quoted in Fox, 1988:12).

According to Celina Fox, publishers regularly reiterated the factuality of sketch artists' illustrations, in an attempt to convince the public of the objectivity of their reports. She writes:

Throughout the early decades, in the descriptions attached to the news illustrations, there was a constant stress on authenticity—"an accurate and most faithful sketch", "a spirited and authentic sketch", "a faithful delineation"—as if to convince themselves and others of their rather shaky claims to fulfill the artistic virtue of "exact description" (Fox, 1988:12).

Once these claims had been asserted it was logically consistent to proffer the grander notion that the illustrations appearing in the press advanced the tradition of history painting. The Illustrated London News referred to its illustrations as the "pictured register of the world's history," suggesting that its engravings offered not only a record of contemporary events, but also a treasure trove for future generations. These two passages from the Illustrated London News make the point clearly, if hyperbolically:

We know that the advent of an Illustrated Newspaper in this country must mark an epoch—give wealth to Literature and stores to History, and put, as it were mile-stones upon the travelled road of time. Here is alone one fine subject of contemplation in such a work—What will it do for the future? Judge by comparison with the past. What would Sir Walter Scott or any of the great writers of modern time have given—whether for the purposes of fiction or history, or political example or disquisition—for any museum preserved volume such as we have here enshrined. The life of the times—the signs of its taste and intelligence—its public monuments and public men—its festivals—institutions—amusements—discoveries—and the very reflections of its living manners and costumes—the variegated dresses of its mind and body—what are—what must be all these but treasures of truth that would have lain hid in Time's tomb, or perished amid the sand of his hour-glass but for the enduring and resuscitating powers of art—the eternal register of the pencil giving life and vigour and palpability to the confirming details of the pen (January 6, 1843, quoted in Fox, 1988:273).

If you have grandchildren open it for them—it will show faithfully what these times were, and it will reflect their living action with pictured fidelity, so that the historian may reap his harvest in that field, and the novelist feed his fiction out of that granary, and the dramatist gather his incidents from that store! (Fox, 1988: 273).

As with the Penny Magazine, imitators emerged competing for the audience claimed by the Illustrated London News. Fox (1988) identifies the Pictorial Times, founded in March 1843, as the "nearest rival" of the Illustrated London News and describes its editorial stance as follows:

It expressly disassociated itself from the illustrated crime sheet, from "all participation in the acts of those who cloud and desecrate the brightness and natural beauty of the highest moral organ by making it the communicant of the foulest abominations, by fantastically smearing it with blood". On its first anniversary, similarly, it stressed its value "preparing a record of news for the moment, and history for the future…" (Fox, 1988:285).

In an 1844 preface, the Pictorial Times characterized illustrated newspapers for its readers in terms that must already have seemed familiar. Illustrated newspapers were:

children of the fancy as well as of the actual world; they are not only papers of news, but pictures of nature and art; they are intended to instruct and refine the feelings and the taste, as well as to convey information…and we venture to think that the amount of intelligence and good feeling which may be acquired through the medium of the eye alone, from works of art, in truthfulness, entireness, and in its immediate effect upon the sensibilities and the mind, has never yet been sufficiently estimated (Pictorial Times, ii, 1844; quoted in Fox, 1988:285-6).

The ideas of universality and factuality associated with art proved useful to second generation pictorial magazine publishers. The contention that art could unite the nation was certainly an over-optimistic conceit nurtured by elites. But asserting the transcendence of art performed a different, more pragmatic function: bridging the gap separating diverse social groups in order to build a mass readership. By proclaiming that they were unallied with any one group's interests, professing to uphold common sense family values, and liberally using "factual" illustrations to present their stories, the second generation publishers hoped to market their products to both elites and the working class, transcending the cultural boundaries created and maintained through social class affiliation.

Both Fox (1988) and Anderson (1991) locate the emergence and popular acceptance of the illustrated press in the decades of the 1830s and 1840s. Fox argues that despite the meteoric growth of these publications, by 1850 they were regarded "in the main as synonymous with bland respectability and universal comprehensibility" (1988:319). Worse yet, public confidence in their claims to factuality appeared to be waning. Critics questioned the ability of the sketch artist to render complex subjects with accurate detail, and some suggested that their representations were compromised by the practice of utilizing previously drawn figures, settings, and objects, and integrating them into new tableaux as need arose. While publications like the Illustrated London News and the Pictorial Times claimed the "photographic fidelity" of their illustrations, the wood engravings they published fell short of the real thing—the fidelity attributed to photographs themselves. James Fenton, a photographer documenting the Crimean War, describes the response to a sketch artist's rendering of the Crimea in this way:

Goodall's sketches seem to astonish everyone from their total want of likeness to the reality, and it is not surprising that it should be so, since you will see from the (photographic) prints sent herewith, that the scenes we have here are not bits of artistic effect which can be effectually rendered by a rough sketch, but wide stretches of open country covered with an infinity of detail (Gernsheim and Gernsheim, 1954:21).

Photography's art

Photography eventually eclipsed the wood engraving as the preferred vehicle for factual visual representation, but the shift came about slowly, for several reasons. Introduced in 1839 while the illustrated press was gaining popularity, photographic images could not provide what sketch artists could: representations of events "as they happen," that is, in motion. Early light sensitive emulsions required long exposure times, and this limitation made portraiture, landscapes, and the still life the most appropriate subjects for photographic depiction. A succession of refinements at the end of the nineteenth century led to photography's conquest of motion, but until that time the fidelity of sketch artists' renditions of transpiring events surpassed what photography could offer. Technology posed another problem obstructing the initial adoption of photography by mass circulation periodicals: no practical process existed prior to the 1870s allowing the direct reproduction of photographs with type. Photographs could only be used as source material to be translated into wood engravings for reproduction. There were additional points of resistance. Professionally entrenched sketch artists and engravers had no intention of ceding their posts to accommodate the upstart medium (see Schuneman, 1969). And "machine-made" photographic images could not immediately invoke the same legitimizing claim to art maintained by the wood engraving. Nevertheless, the technological nature of photographic image making would eventually become a selling point, providing a public rationale for what would prove to be a more efficient process for mass reproducing illustrations. But until these various hurdles could be overcome, photographs functioned primarily as grist for the draftsman's mill.

Photography offered an antidote to the problem of declining public faith in sketch artists' credibility, and the prospect of bolstering both faith and circulation made jumping technological and professional hurdles appear worthwhile. Nineteenth century writers widely proclaimed photography unsurpassed in veracity. Representing the contemporary view, in 1857 Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, writing in the London Quarterly Review, described photography as follows:

She is the sworn witness of everything presented to her view. What are her unerring records in the service of mechanics, engineering, geology, and natural history, but facts of the most sterling and stubborn kind?

The universality and factuality of art were the cornerstones upon which the illustrated press had built its claim to a mass audience, and photography appeared the logical heir to the wood engraving. Heralded as a medium of fact, photography took up the mantle of realistic representation while art, at the turn of the century, veered off its traditional path. The rise of formalism in modern art shifted claims of universality and factuality away from hand-made images to images perceived to be machine-made. By 1920 linking the visual arts with fact may have proven a difficult notion to sell. In 1884 the introduction of the halftone process opened the door to efficient mass reproduction of photographs in the press, and by the 1920s photographs displaced wood engravings almost entirely.

Simon Michael Bessie's history of tabloid newspapers in the United States, Jazz Journalism, makes clear the parallels between the rise of mass market periodicals in Britain and the U.S. In each case, publishers endeavored to create and maintain a public for their wares. As in Britain, advocating public education could benefit publishers by increasing literacy and thereby expanding potential markets. In order to attract the largest possible readership, American publishers imitated successful British miscellanies by combining information with entertainment and making liberal use of illustrations. Illustrations played a key role, according to Bessie:

Most successful of the technical advances was the increased use of illustrations and photographs. Pulitzer used this attraction to the limit and it was to the World's unprecedented exploitation of pictures that the Journalist attributed its unparalleled circulation. By September of 1886 the World was selling 250,000 copies daily, "the largest circulation ever attained by any American newspaper" up to that time (Bessie, 1938:45-6).

Bessie suggests that far from a novel phenomenon, sensational "yellow journalism" of the late nineteenth century continued previously established traditions that emerged and persevered due to market pressures. "Mass newspapers must advocate popular causes but, first of all, they must attract mass attention and this the World did by ceaseless manipulations of the ancient curiosities in Love, Death, Sin, Violence and Money" (Bessie, 1938:43-4).

Bessie's account of the emergence of the tabloid in the U.S. offers a useful contemporary perspective. Tabloid papers have been neglected by scholars, many of whom consider the tabloid a debased form of journalism, and therefore unworthy of attention. [exceptions: Packer, Becker] The tremendous popularity of tabloids and their heavy reliance on photography make them worth some scrutiny, since all newspapers, whether they target a class or mass readership, exist within a commercial environment and compete with each other to attract the largest possible audience. The popularity of tabloids made it hard for publishers of upscale papers to ignore their methods. Bessie describes the areas in which the tabloid style seemed especially influential:

Taking their cue from the tabloid, editors were learning that it is profitable to concentrate upon one story at a time, playing it up until the last drop of interest has been drained….In their selection of stories, all newspapers came to adopt the values of the tabloid. Attention was concentrated upon sex, crime, sport and sentiment….Even greater than its effect upon the presentation of the news was the tabloid's influence upon other parts of the newspaper. Devotion to features became so intense that "the side shows threatened to swallow the main tent." Like the modern drug store, the daily newspaper adopted so many supplementary items that the article upon which its name had been based became almost an incidental. In addition to material that can be classed as news or editorial interpretation, the typical American daily in 1938 contained the following miscellany: cartoons, recipes, style patterns, child advice, health comment, question and answer column, society column, beauty information, comics, romance assistance, contests, puzzles, games, radio comment, Hollywood gossip, Broadway items, book reviews, sports features, oddities, fiction, etiquette and pictures (Bessie, 1938:231-3).

The array of daily newspaper offerings listed by Bessie resembles Anderson's (1991) descriptive account of the contents of 1840s illustrated periodicals, and corresponds with the menu featured by newspapers today. These accounts suggest the continuity in approach characteristic of mass circulation periodicals. Bessie argues further that the primary influence exerted by the tabloid concerned the use of photography. He claims that prior to World War I photographs accompanied an "occasional story", a practice altered by the proven success of tabloid newspapers.

When the tabloid taught its readers to expect a picture with every story, the large papers were forced to imitate this popular practice. They did not attempt to produce an illustration for each account but the sports, entertainment and society pages were always decorated with pictures and the rotogravure section became a weekly feature of every newspaper in the country. When anything really important occurred—a big athletic event, a major political happening, a great tragedy or a stirring crime—the big papers learned to carry as many, if not more pictures than the tabloid (1938:233).

During the 1920s, according to Bessie, newspaper readers viewed the press cynically, giving rise to the commonplace, "You can't believe all you read in the newspapers." Despite a lack of faith in written accounts, Bessie suggests that photographs had maintained their credibility, and readers were more apt to trust what they saw (in news photographs) than what they read:

To a generation which had yet to learn that the camera can be the author of as many lies as truths, seeing was still believing and a newspaper picture taken (allegedly) on the spot was accepted as proof of a story's accuracy (1938:69).

In addition to enlivening the page with vivid illustrations, photographs may have restored some measure of credibility to the newspaper. This contention may seem tenuous, especially given the practice among some tabloid papers of constructing photo fakes known as "composographs", but even these may have been received with too little skepticism due to the veracity widely attributed to photographic images.

An early textbook devoted to graphic journalism supports several of Bessie's contentions regarding the influence of the tabloid and demonstrates the persistence of early nineteenth century conceptualizations of the illustrated periodical. Pictorial Journalism was written in 1939 by a group of journalism professionals, all of whom had at one time worked at The Washington Post. Laura Vitray and John Mills, Jr. went on to other jobs by the time of the book's publication, and Roscoe Ellard was a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri. The book anticipates changes in the style of the modern newspaper, changes necessitated by the impact of radio and motion pictures on newspaper journalism, or so the authors imply. Other new technologies motivated change: the introduction of wirephotos, improvements in printing, color photography and color engraving. The book resulted from "experimental work…seeking better methods of presenting and coordinating reading matter, newsphotos, and advertising" (1939:xi).

Vitray and her associates offer a justification for the increased use of news photographs that builds on the idea advanced by early publishers of illustrated periodicals that pictures are universally communicative. They rework universality by applying a modernist frame of reference that yields a newly valued attribute: "instantaneousness." Asserting news photographs' value in this way also responds to the competitive threat introduced by radio, newsreel, and television reporting. They write:

 Newspaper executives, many of whom still regard journalism as uniquely a writing profession and photography as an unwelcome interloper in the field, are apt to believe they have been forced to a more pictorial presentation of the news by the competition of radio reporting, with television in the offing, and of the newsreels.

 The truth goes much deeper. The development of modern photographic and engraving processes might not have been so rapid and so amazing if what they had to offer had not so well answered the demand of the modern mind for a quality best described as "instantaneousness."

 As living has become more complex, as the boundaries of communication have been pushed farther and farther out, until every man's thoughts and interests encompassed the entire earth, the mental and emotional reaction has been one of stripping away all that was superfluous and cumbersome, in order to arrive at essential things as rapidly as possible.

 In the arts, in architecture, and in the applied arts, this speed or "purism" of the modern mind has resulted in forms which the artist is apt to call "elemental" and which the everyday man dubs "streamlining." The word is a graphic one and has come to be applied to everything from a skyscraper or an automobile to the latest forms of layout for the newspaper front page. Perhaps the most streamlined of all is modern thought itself. It has cast off all the curlicues of olden days and insists at arriving at beauty, at fact, and at knowledge by the shortest route.

 That is the surest reason why picture reporting, the "instantaneous" route to realization of the world's events, has succeeded in pushing column after column of mere words out of the daily paper. So inevitably has the transition taken place that it may be said to have happened in spite of the reluctance and opposition of men of the old newspaper school, rather than with their cooperation (Vitray, et. al., 1939:4).

Thus argued, Vitray and her associates assert the factuality (and the modernity) of photographs while maintaining the link between picture reporting and the arts. Though painting had moved from realism to formalism, by the 1920s photography's most vocal claim to status as a fine art revolved around what were deemed the essential characteristics of the medium. "Straight photography" and "pure photography" were the terms used to describe the work of art photographers who now eschewed their painterly, pictorialist predilections and, instead, advocated sharp focus pictures that exploited the technical capacities of the medium. Charles Sheeler's comparison of his own painting and photography illustrates the attitude held by artists of the 20s:

I have come to value photography more and more for those things which it alone can accomplish, rather than to discredit it for the things which can only be achieved through another medium. In painting I have had a continued interest in natural forms and have sought the best use of them for the enhancement of design. In photography I have strived to enhance my technical equipment for the best statement of the immediate facts (Quoted in Newhall, 1982:178).

Art photography of the period reflected other perspectives as well, and photographers made various kinds of abstractions, composites, and montages that paralleled the formalism predominating painting. But amongst the differing approaches to art photography, the purist "straight photography" movement offered publishers the most opportune way to maintain news photography's link with art.

Beaumont Newhall's history of photography makes clear that formal aesthetic criteria are used to judge art photographs, whether or not they adhere to the tenets of the "straight" approach. When writing about Sheeler's work, Newhall praises it for its "sensitive interpretation of form and texture." A news photograph, conversely, is judged first "for its essential value, or content," according to Vitray, and then for its reproducibility. Vitray proposes a rating scale that divides the content attributes of a photograph into equal thirds: 33 1/3 % for the importance of the personality involved, 33 1/3 % for the news it reports, and 33 1/3 % for the amount of action portrayed. Photographs must earn an overall rating of 60 per cent in order to merit publication. Vitray advises photographers to keep up to date on important people in the community and in the world at large in order to fulfill the first criterion. Her definition of newsworthiness, the second criterion, suggests the importance of presenting news in an entertaining package, and invokes the same values guiding publishers of nineteenth century illustrated miscellanies, values subsequently adopted by publishers of tabloids. She explains the criteria for judging news value as follows:

All news, near or far, concerns four great elemental human themes: Survival, sex, ambition, and escape. These are the four great motives or instincts, which form the patterns of man's existence on this earth. His interest is at once aroused by anything which invokes them.

Of the four, survival is perhaps the most elemental. The struggle to keep alive and to go on living has been in progress since the first savage wrapped himself in animal pelts, warmed himself before a fire, or nourished himself on the flesh of the creature he had slain. Newsphotos that invoke the survival instinct are sure of appeal. That is why people look at pictures of an airplane crash, a fire, a flood, or a catastrophe of any kind. It is why they are interested in pictures having to do with some crime which endangered life. It is why they are concerned with pictures of famine-ridden people, of foreign wars, of strikes for better living conditions….

Survival—or anything that threatens it—is news.

Next to survival, sex is probably the second great human interest. Translated into news pictures, it implies intense public interest in romances, in engagements, in weddings and in divorces. It brings many widely different pictures within the category of news, from the kiss of two prominent movie stars to photographs of the principals in a crime of jealousy. Pictures of babies probably have their tremendous emotional pull because they tend to combine appeal to the romantic or sex instinct and to the survival instinct, which becomes a protective sense where it affects those who are helpless.

Sex—romance, love, and hate—is news.

Third of these great pillars of the news is the ambition theme—the appeal to man's urge to surpass his fellows, to gain power, to be an important person in wealth or in influence over the lives of others. Ambition takes in the whole arena of the of the business world, of politics, of scientific, social, and many other forms of achievement. The appeal to this instinct to reach the top of the human pile accounts for the fact that the humblest factory worker may study over news shots of a great society event or that citizens of a great democracy may clamor avidly for photos depicting life in a royal castle. Pictures of the Duke of Windsor and his bride, the former Wallis Warfield, an American-born commoner, had a twofold appeal to the romantic instinct and to the instinct of ambition.

Ambition—getting to the top—is news.

Fourth of the forms of news appeal in pictures is escape. Never quite content with the spot on earth where he must live, man longs insatiably for change, for adventure, for fun and glamour and everything which will give him momentary respite from the struggle for existence...Newsphotos with the escape interest may be sports shots, or movie shots, or adventure and exploration, or photographs having to do with the fine arts, radio, or the screen. The variety is almost endless, but the test is sure.

Escape—adventure, prowess, and daring—is news (Vitray, et. al., 1939:34-5).

The news values Vitray delineates bear out Bessie's contention that the tabloid press influenced more conservative, mainstream papers like the Washington Post. The criteria for newsworthiness represented here parallel attributes often associated with popular fiction, suggesting that competition with other mass media may have tipped the balance towards entertainment value.

In addition to the importance of photographing recognizable personalities and addressing the "great elemental human themes," action is the third criterion for successful news photography. Vitray equates action with motion, either the physical activity of a person or the movement of an object through space. The authors elaborate their definition so that it encompasses as well "action in the human face" or the display of emotion. They also point out that portrayals of stationary objects shot from an angle can introduce a greater sense of action, but they warn editors to be wary of such shots, as they only offer "pseudo-action." Vitray offers this conclusion: "the ideal toward which all sections of the newspaper should strive is that of more interest through more action" (1939:38).

Formal criteria used to assess the quality of news photographs emphasize their reproducibility. "Judging for copy" insures the instantaneousness of published news photographs. Vitray recommends a rating scale evaluating degree of sharp focus, detail, and tonal contrast. "Art department" employees retouch "imperfect" prints with water-soluble paint, making them more suitable for halftone reproduction. Vitray reassures readers that retouching is not done in order to "pretty up" halftones: "The things we do to them are done to increase their emotional pull" (Vitray, et. al. 1939:178). As the text proceeds to detail strategies for page layout, the authors reveal an important factor determining the role performed by news photographs: advertising. Vitray's recommendations make clear that news photographs serve a publicity function, drawing the reader to page one, and then to the inside pages where advertisements await.

The newspaper's front page has a function closely resembling that of the magazine cover….It must sell the paper. It must also—and this is what so frequently is overlooked—get the whole paper read. If the purchaser glances over the front-page banner lines and big stories, then throws the thing away, the advertisers will not be getting results and the financial security of the paper will be undermined….As the first step, then, in making the front page fulfill its proper function, it is obvious that we must build a page which gives the reader less, but promises him more, a promise which only the inside pages can fulfill (Vitray, et. al., 1939:255).

Therefore, the front page can be conceived as an advertisement that sells the ads inside the newspaper.

Given this conception of the dynamics of newspaper reading, emphasizing photographs' instantaneousness and their emotional pull seems a logical stance. Vitray discusses the role photographs play in channeling readers:

Pictures can lead the reader into the paper as surely as stories can—perhaps more surely, because of the emotional appeal of good news photographs. When a single dramatic shot of a big news story is played boldly on the front page, and the reader is referred to the daily picture page or to an inside page for more, he is practically certain to turn to them. Picture appetite can be depended upon as a means of getting the paper read, much more than appetite for reading matter. The same man or woman who never reads the jumps probably always looks at the pictures (Vitray, et. al., 1939:260).

Economic considerations drive the recommendations Vitray makes. Throughout the text the authors caution against using layout strategies that undermine the visibility of advertising. Lines like this appear and are reiterated: "Unless a newspaper can produce page layouts which get the advertising read, it may find itself without revenue (1939:203), or:

…we must not seek the bizarre in layout on news pages, for exaggerated effects would detract from the appeal of the advertising and would not work into the general page plan.

 Layouts for inside pages on the daily must usually consist of very simple asymmetric arrangements of two or three pictures so placed as to balance advertising. Where the advertising runs strong, any layout may be too much, yet a single newsphoto may be effectively placed (1939:215).

The pragmatic views espoused by Vitray, et. al. suggest the evolutionary course traveled by mass marketed illustrated publications. The need to cultivate audiences and build circulation was a consistent factor influencing periodicals published during the hundred year period between 1830 and 1930. The periodicals discussed here all performed a similar hegemonic function, implicitly maintaining social class distinctions and preserving elite leadership. But, as Fox (1988) and especially Anderson (1991) argue persuasively, the first generation of publications conscientiously worked towards quelling social unrest by attempting to inculcate an appreciation for elite cultural values, thereby maintaining the status quo. For Charles Knight and publishers of his era, art became a mainstreaming apparatus, employed to coalesce divergent values. Through their publishing efforts they hoped to elevate the intellectual level of the working class, and instill in the populace a sense of shared commitments.

In the second generation art became a different kind of tool. Despite the fact that the illustrations found in the new periodicals seldom reproduced fine art works, asserting that illustrations were themselves art bestowed upon wood engravings a common sense legitimacy that their subject matter might otherwise have discouraged. Invocations of art's universality and factuality—its objectivity—helped set illustrations beyond the reach of political controversy, and it could therefore be argued that they were accessible and valuable to all. Following the lead of popular illustrated miscellanies, mass circulation periodicals catered to an imagined public taste and, in accordance with the debased view of their audience held by commercial publishers, they heightened entertainment values above the educational ideals held by the previous generation. Art retreated to elite confines while dramas revolving around crime, romance, catastrophe, and intrigue became standard fare. The proven success of illustrations as a means of building circulation led to their routine use, and their asserted fidelity rather than their expressiveness became the source of their value.

Given this evolutionary trend, the invention of photography occurred at an opportune moment. Photography emerged as the visual medium best suited to take up the mantle of objectivity, based on the popularly held view that a mechanical device, a camera, makes photographs. The deficiencies attributed to images produced by sketch artists' hands were eradicated by the modern, technological picture-making medium. Over time, as the use of photographs became more routinized and institutionalized, strategic invocations of art diminished. In Vitray's text, the vestiges of art remain in such expressions as "art desk" and "art department". She writes: "Most large papers have a picture desk or art desk located in the city room, where pictures for each edition of the paper are delivered from the photo studio and from the services" (1939:13). According to Vitray's usage all the editorial images used in the various sections of the paper are referred to in general terms as the publication's "art". The "art department" houses those technicians responsible for retouching photographs to improve them for half-tone reproduction. In this usage "art" is a term used to describe the hand-work done by the art department staff, recalling the craft process of wood engraving. While nineteenth century writers called picture reporters "sketch artists," by the 1930s authors like Vitray did not employ the term when referring to the photographers producing illustrations for the press. The end of the first hundred years of illustrated periodicals is marked by a conceptual shift from art to fact, from hand-made images to pictures conceived as emerging from a machine.

Photographers have been conceptualized as camera operators rather than artists or authors, technicians who initially received no credit or by line for the work they produced. It comes as no surprise that photographers have often been considered "second-class citizens" in the newsroom. As their ranks increased, newspaper photographers began organizing associations to bolster their professional profile, and by 1945 a national organization emerged: the National Press Photographers Association. The explicit rationales for starting the NPPA were to improve working conditions and assure the rights of press photographers, and to improve their public image by raising standards and professional norms of behavior.

Establishing the organization performed other implicit functions as well, chief among them, standardizing professional practice. The NPPA engaged in a variety of educational outreach activities, both to improve the work of current press photographers and to recruit and train the next generation by authoring photojournalism curricula for colleges and universities. With funding from Encyclopedia Britannica, the NPPA initiated the "Flying Short Course," a professional training program that travels the U.S. each year. NPPA began publishing its own magazine in 1946. In addition to its educational outreach activities the organization sought open access to news events, worked towards formalizing relationships with gatekeepers like police and fire departments, drafted anti-assault legislation, and offered job placement and insurance to its members. By the 1950s photojournalism settled into a period of stability, with institutionally ensconced staffs and a national organization inculcating shared professional norms. Aesthetic standards became fixed through regular "clips contests" that exemplified successful reproduction of photojournalism's visual codes.

The Credible Image

During the 1980s revolutionary changes in photographic imaging technology opened a Pandora's box of issues concerning the medium's credibility and the future of photojournalism, compromising the perceived factuality of the photographic image—the quality upon which its use in the press now depends. A recent statement of values published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune makes clear the importance its publishers attribute to the paper's credibility. After testifying that the paper acknowledges a distinction between journalistic values and corporate values, and that the Star Tribune endeavors to keep them from intermingling in the process of producing news, the statement concludes:

Star Tribune strives to provide information that is accurate, fair and unaffected by the special interests of advertisers or top company executives. Credibility is the most important "product" Star Tribune has.

Considering the special effort made by the paper to address readers regarding the issue of credibility, it seems logically consistent that the Star Tribune would take such a strong public stand against Stormi Greener when she digitally removed the power lines visible in her photograph. Newspapers nationwide have publicly stated their intention to preserve the integrity of news photographs by instituting formal guidelines governing the use of the digital imaging technology that has become a professional norm.

Controversy surrounding the initial adoption of digital imaging technology set the stage for self-scrutiny, reassessment and potential innovation in the conception and practice of photojournalism. While self-scrutiny and reassessment are much in evidence in trade journals like the NPPA's News Photographer, innovation seems an unlikely outcome of the past several years' discussions among industry professionals and academics. Photojournalists' past attitudes regarding appropriate professional practice provide a foundation for examining these more recent debates and the continuities and shifts they represent. Discussions of photojournalism ethics and articles reporting ethical breaches suggest photojournalists' approaches to upholding the credibility and the viability of their profession. Discussions fall into two broad categories: infractions perpetrated in the act of shooting, and violations introduced in the darkroom or in production.

The single most cited violation of photojournalism norms involves what photojournalists refer to as "set-ups", the addition of elements or directorial interference that allows photographers to "liven up the shot," making for a more interesting visual image. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, among them using props, posing subjects, directing reenactments, constructing fabrications and using models. The literature abounds with references to photographers (usually of a former generation) who along with their photo equipment carried props like teddy bears or other objects that could be strategically positioned within the frame in order to humanize and add poignancy to photos. When subjects' activities or positions fail to meet photographers' aesthetic requirements they may explicitly ask them to pose, or subtly motivate them to strike a more photogenic pose. This practice is most obvious and least controversial in portraits. When photographers arrive too late to catch an action as it occurred, or if an act was not performed in a manner considered appropriately aesthetic, photographers have been known to ask subjects to walk through their activities a second or third time. Photographers may invent visually appealing scenarios and enlist the support of subjects to enact a supplied script. When real people involved in hard to find, often illegal activities cannot be photographed, models can be used to save time, money, and alleviate deadline pressures.

All of these kinds of set-ups receive serious treatment by professionals who claim that public knowledge of such photographer manipulations undermine the profession, casting doubt on the images produced by all photojournalists, guilty and innocent alike. In response to a Tulsa photographers' indiscretion the Tulsa Tribune adopted the following policy:

We believe it is important to maintain the credibility of our photographs.

We believe that the same standards of honesty applied to news copy should apply to photographs as well.

Photographers will no longer cause to happen, re-create, or in any way control activity in a photograph. The only influence a photographer may have is an admonition to the subject to ignore the camera.

Photographers may pose a subject for a portrait or for an illustration but the result must make it obvious to the reader that it is a posed situation and not a real one.

Another threat to credibility found discussed in the trade journals results from the photographer's own presence on the scene. Photographers may intentionally or unintentionally act as catalysts, provoking behavior among subjects that would not otherwise have occurred. The most extreme example of such reactivity is the photo-opportunity, an event staged solely for the purpose of provoking news coverage.

News organizations worry about their public image, as the Star Tribune's actions demonstrate, and the behavior of employees in the act of newsgathering may promote either goodwill or scorn. One of the NPPA's inaugural agenda items concerned improving and standardizing the behavioral norms considered appropriate among photojournalists nationwide. These issues were revisited during the mid 1970s when codes governing ethical behavior proliferated, reportedly in response to Watergate era media circuses that shined an unflattering spotlight on representatives of the press. Areas singled out for improvement included sensitivity to individuals' privacy, adhering to professional codes of dress, aggressiveness in the act of accessing subjects, and overall courtesy. Much like the film industry's self-initiated motion picture code, industry self-censorship often represents an attempt to craft good public relations and ward off the potential for external intervention.

According to the trade magazines, once the photographer enters the darkroom other procedures compromising the integrity of the image must be avoided. Basic photographic procedures are widely accepted—burning, dodging, and cropping pose no threat to credibility—unless their use dramatically changes the meaning evoked by a straight print. These tools serve to enhance images, not remake them, as Vitray, et. al. claimed in 1939. More controversial procedures elicit a mixed response. Most photographers agree that flipping a negative is inappropriate, and toning down or eliminating backgrounds, airbrushing, and cutting and pasting all provoke disapproval. This attitude represents a departure from the elaborate practices of "art department" staff Vitray outlined. Judgments regarding acceptable retouching have become more stringent in recent decades and may be responsive to improvements in printing technology that have reduced the need to "clean up" prints for halftone reproduction. Photographers who advocate minimal "enhancement" are considered "purists", while most photographers recognize the occasional need for some special technique.

The full force of these restrictions applies to news and sports sections of newspapers, while most consider manipulating features, food and fashion photographs non-controversial. The fact that debate continues throughout the pre-digital era indicates the lack of any uniform set of standards applied across publications. Photographers and their editors both resisted the imposition of rules and regulations governing their professional activities.

When the Associated Press began transmitting photographs electronically, they helped their major newspaper clients make the transition to digital imaging by giving them the hardware necessary to receive their dispatches. AP effectively set in motion the transformation of major metropolitan dailies to digital imaging. Most urban papers no longer maintain so-called chemical darkrooms at all. Photographers continue to shoot and process film, and will do so until digital cameras can produce the necessary image quality for newspaper reproduction, but all subsequent picture preparation takes place on the computer screen, often foregoing paper prints altogether. The new technology ushered photographers out of the isolated confines of the darkroom and into the newsroom, and as their work transformed a maelstrom of commentary issued forth from photojournalists and picture editors nationwide. Fear and anxiety filled much of the response to digital technology.

What could this technology do that traditional methods of photographic image making could not do? The two most significant changes are that manipulations once done in the darkroom can be done more easily and more quickly by computer; and computer manipulation is much more difficult to detect than conventional printing techniques, airbrushing, or cutting and pasting. Computer-based digital imaging heightens the potential for deception in the print preparation process. One editor's view encapsulates the fervent attitude espoused by many: "all photographers change reality somewhat by using different types of lenses or dodging and burning…electronic manipulation is more insidious because it take those tools and multiplies them by 10,000."

As digital imaging technology spread to papers across the country so did debate. This wave of change provoked newspapers to compose guidelines for the technology's use, in an effort to protect the integrity of the journalists' enterprise—to maintain credibility. Assuming that photographers still conformed to ethical standards governing shooting that were already in place, the onus for protecting credibility shifted to members of the newspaper staff responsible for operating computer systems and preparing photographs for publication. Some questioned whether these people had sufficient journalism training to buttress the decisions that would face them, casting aspersions on mere technicians. Others distinguished the more fully developed ethical sensibilities and experience base of staffs working on major metropolitan dailies compared to staffs at smaller papers, worrying that these country cousins might jeopardize the reputations of all photojournalists.

As with attitudes regarding the unimpeachable honesty of the camera, many photojournalists argue that the technology is neutral, even though its users may not be. Therefore the technology already in place in newsrooms across the country could also be construed non-problematic; all that might need fixing was the ethical standards of those who use it. National Press Photographers Association president John Long took a more pessimistic view in 1989, although the end point of his position is consistent with conclusions drawn by advocates of the new technology:

The only hope lies in you and me. We must be honest in all our professional dealings. We ourselves, the photojournalists, must be trusted because the images themselves will no longer be proof positive. Reporters have a long and honored tradition of honesty. It is a tenet of their profession, it is their Hippocratic oath. We need to develop the same internal standards, the same deep beliefs in the rightness of what we are doing. Our future depends on us and no one else.

Prodded by the technological revolution in their midst, photojournalists began discussing the basic tenets of professional practice in the digital age. After several years of argument at conferences and in the trade journals a consensus began to emerge. Motivated by a series of celebrated cases—National Geographic's decision to move pyramids to better fit the magazine's cover, a cola can digitally eliminated from a portrait, the digital manipulation of the cover photos on A Day in the Life of _________ books, and the heads of famous people showing up on others' bodies—most photojournalists and editors agreed that manipulating the content of news photographs must be prohibited. This restriction parallels the taboo on photographers adding elements or moving objects before shooting pictures.

Manipulating the form of an image receives less stringent treatment. As in the past, computer equivalents of burning, dodging, cropping, color correction, eliminating dust spots or scratches are deemed acceptable. But using computers to airbrush, a common technique formerly employed to improve news photos, has been widely rejected. A case in point illustrates the fine line photojournalists currently draw in the pursuit of credibility. An extraneous cola can detracting from the composition of a photograph should not be eliminated by computer. But cropping the frame to eliminate the can is acceptable. The motivation for this fine distinction in acceptable practices is clear—eliminating one picture element using digital technology implies that the practice is acceptable, and may have been employed on any given image.

Photojournalists have taken a conservative position towards digital imaging. The guiding philosophy adopted in the effort to maintain credibility can be summarized as follows: "don't do anything that can't be done in the darkroom." Ironically, for decades photographers have altered images significantly using chemical processes. The current catch phrase ignores that well-known fact, invoking a purism few photojournalists ever emulated. In order to clarify this position, both the NPPA and the AP have issued statements regarding manipulation. The NPPA released this "statement of principle" on digital manipulation of photographs, adopted on November 12, 1990:

 As journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public.

 As photojournalists, we have the responsibility to document society and to preserve its images as a matter of historical record. It is clear that the emerging electronic technologies provide new challenges to the integrity of photographic images. This technology enables the manipulation of the content of an image in such a way that the change is virtually undetectable. In light of this, we, the National Press Photographers Association, reaffirm the basis of our ethics: Accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession.

 We believe photojournalistic guidelines for accuracy currently in use should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. Altering the editorial content of a photograph, in any degree, is a breach of the ethical standards recognized by the NPPA (News Photographer, October 1990:6).

In order to avoid these problems altogether the photographer now shoulders an additional burden: the expectation that he or she will shoot in such a way that alteration is unnecessary. As an editor writes: "Shoot it clean. If you can't be good, at least be graphic. It becomes a composition problem. Don't manipulate the photo, manipulate your brain." This recommendation reveals some of the contradictions inherent in the debate, and raises questions only infrequently addressed. Although newspapers have adopted guidelines governing their use of digital imaging technology, the conundrums the technology introduces can be avoided by clever photographers who successfully compose their pictures so that invasive editing is not required. But what does the photographer do when he or she uses her brain? The recent debates fail to embrace larger issues regarding the authorship of the photographic image. While passing reference has been made regarding the manipulations inherent in the image making process, this avenue remains mostly unexplored. Photojournalists note the significance of a range of choices made by photographers—angle of view; film stocks, their capacities and their aesthetic qualities; the use or non-use of artificial lighting and other exposure controls; lenses and their differing representations of space and spatial relationships; the limitations imposed by the frame. And there are more, all of which indicate that photographers interpret reality with their pictures rather than record it.

The proliferation of discussion and debate sparked by the digital revolution in photography might have embraced these fundamental issues, seizing the moment of change as an opportunity for innovation. But the positions taken by the rank and file represent a retreat to a moral high ground from which to fend off assaults on credibility. In 1990 NPPA leaders began to re-invoke objectivity and truth, canons that had often been reined in and replaced with fairness and accuracy. Recently drafted statements of principle fail to work out the inconsistencies that regularly appear in print. Accounts of the variety of decisions photographers make when shooting a picture still stand alongside prohibitions against manipulation.

The history of photojournalism helps explain the rhetorical stance contemporary photojournalists and editors are adopting. The strategic elevation of recording above expression, of fact above art, that emerged along with the commercial press has encouraged denial of the constructed, authored nature of photographic representations. Over time, as photojournalism has become institutionalized as a field of endeavor distinct from other kinds of photographic imaging, the camera's role in representing events has been framed in such a way as to eclipse the activity of the news photographer who uses it. We seldom hear talk about "illustrations" in the press—we are encouraged to believe that we witness events first-hand through the technological capacities of the medium of photography. It is therefore incumbent upon editors and publishers to safeguard what photography offers, to protect the public from abuses introduced by those practitioners, even respected photojournalists like Stormi Greener, who subvert the neutrality of camera-made images when they act as though they are making pictures. Especially in an era of shrinking readership, the newspaper business can hardly afford to let go of their claims to objectivity, a historically proven marketing tool. The rhetoric of photojournalism still abounds in contradictions that result from the collision of first-hand experience with the picture making process and the economic imperative to build and preserve credibility. The tenor of recent debates suggests that the controversy introduced by digital technology will be short-lived while the contradictions inherent in photojournalism endure.

References

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Newhall, Beaumont (1982) The History of Photography: from 1839 to the present. New York Graphic Society.

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Taft, Robert (1938) Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889. Dover.