Ethics and Pictures

When I first started reading the Poynter Online article, I remembered that my Magazine, Then and Now class debated a similar topic. This one was, it is ok to photoshop the profile images that appear of celebrities on the covers of magazines? Obviously, once you get into pictures from the field, the decision is more clear cut. Which brings me to editing for video. In the example Poynter gave, the photojournalist gets some great sound of a storm, then gets a great picture. In that case, since it's part of the same filming and within a few minutes of each other, I don't have a problem with putting the sounds and film together. To me, that isn't any different from adding natural sound to audioclips. Lynda and Karen told us in class that we should record any sounds that we happening and add them to our sound bytes. How is putting sounds from an event into a videotape any different? However, in the case of the casino shooting, the newsroom added their own sounds, not sounds from the casino. If someone had recorded it, I think they could have played the audio as well, but I don't think it is ethical to add sounds when they aren't the original sounds.

In the other article, "Staged, Staging, Stages" I thought the author gave some good tips for avoiding letting the camera influence what the subjects are doing. I know it's hard for me to act naturally when there is someone pointing a camera at me. It makes me nervous. The author also points out that people tend to feel uncomfortable when they are asked to stage something. However, he doesn't mention that it is sometimes the people's idea. For example, last semester I was working at the Missourian and I did a story on the mannequins they use to teach medical students. The director told me to come by and she would show me how the mannequin worked. I brought along a convergence student to videotape it. When I got there, I found that they were staging an entire procedure with the mannequin so we could get the full idea of how it worked. In the interests of journalism, would this type of staging be allowed, as long as you put that it was a demonstration, not a real practice with the mannequin?