Pictures that Lie

Take a look at this first picture. Pretty shocking, isn't it? Now look at the two photographs at the end of this post. These are not nearly as moving. The first picture is actually a composite of the second two. This doctored image appeared in the Los Angeles Times, masquerading as an original, shortly after the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq.

A newspaper staff member first suspected the image had been altered when he noticed that the man squatting behind the soldier was pictured not once, but twice. After further inquiry, photographer Brian Walsky admitted that he had edited the images, saying that he had "tarnished the reputation" of the L.A. Times (Van Ripper; to read this article, click here). He claimed, however, that he only complied the amalgamation in order to improve the picture's "composition."

Walsky makes it appear as if the soldier is gesturing towards the civilian, as if warning or vanquishing him, when in actuality his gesture was unrelated to the man.

What is so disturbing, however, is not that he changed the meaning of the picture, for in fact, this was insignificant, as it had little effect on the story he was telling. The real issue is that Walsky destroyed the credibility of photojournalists. That the misleading image was detected only after the publication of the Times emphasized the fact that numerous other images' doctoring may have gone undetected. This was harmful indeed.

I was immediately drawn to this photograph because my Media Interp. class had looked at it briefly and I knew I wanted to learn more. Clearly, this is an important issue.

Van Ripper, Frank. "Manipulating Truth, Loosing Credibility". Washington Post. Web. 23 Feb 2010.

CLT

The AT&T Center for Learning Technology is a fabulous resource for Trinity students interested in engaging in audio/video editing, digital photography, web design-- even video conferencing. It also assists professors in producing multimedia materials used in the classroom, and maintains the electronic classrooms throught campus. It's located on the first floor of the Library, where knowledgeable staff are eager to assist students, even on nights and weekends. The CLT provides students with access to both Apple computers and PCs. It includes a digital audio lab, a private room where faculty and students can record and edit audio; a video conference center which makes and takes video calls from as far away as China and with people as famous as Hilary Clinton; an innovation studio, a training area open to both faculty/staff and students; and a media presentations lab. Housed on the computers in the CLT are programs like Photoshop, Cool Edit Pro, and Adobe Premier Pro as well as more basic applications like Microsoft Office, Safari or Internet Explorer, and CD and DVD burners. Support for TLearn and TriniTV is also based in the CLT. I encourage everyone to take advantage of this great resource.

Copyright

Copyright is viewed by many college students as the absolute bane of their existence. Not only must they be careful not to infringe on copyright in the realm of academia, but they are also annoyed at having to pay the $0.99 or $1.29 cents on Itunes when they could have downloaded the song for free through limewire or similar applications. In fact, these precautions are legitimate concerns. It is a federal felony to commit copyright infringement involving more than ten copies and a value of $2500; while the feds do not generally pursue prosecution, violators are often faced with civil litigation (suite by the copyright holder) and may be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading just a couple songs illegally.

While this may be annoying, even frightening, copyright is actually a valuable policy, even for people who never copyright anything they create. By assuring that creators will be able to control the reproduction/ distribution and profit from their own creations, copyright encourages innovation and creativity, for if creators had not guarantee that they would profit from their work, they would have little incentive to conceptualize or produce anything original. Our founding fathers were actually cognizant of this; they included a law regarding copyright in Title 17 of the constitution.

The government realizes, however, that sometimes it is necessary to make copies and share them, and they created the fair use provision. This is especially applicable to the world of academics, and applies to college and graduate students in particular. It is important to understand however, that this fair use policy is liberal, but does not cover everything used for academic work. (For example, you can’t copy an entire book and pass those copies around.) The considerations in determining if the copy is legal are: (1) nature of the work (2) intended purpose (3) amount of original work being reproduced (4) the effect that reproduction has on the revenue stream of the holder.

While I may sometimes view copyright as an annoying, I am absolutely in favor of it. I know that in any civilization, innovation is integral, and I therefore support this policy. In addition, I am glad that no on can make money on anything I create unless I authorize them to do so. (For everyone is holds an automatic copyright on anything they produce, even if they do not submit their work to the copyright office or pay a fee.) Clearly, our founding fathers were on the right track.

This work by Erin Dooley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.