Enhanced Photojournalism

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/growing-concern-that-news-photos-are-being-excessively-manipulated-a-898509-druck.html

Not good.

Some days ago there was an essay on the terrible (=lacking) quality of German journalists - especially the young ones who have just passed journalism school - and their extremely heavy linking and sympathizing with the political Green and left, and how journalism has degenerated to just paste-and-copy from the other guy, without doing own research and not trying to verify and evaluate any info independently (not even knowing anymore how to do that), and that nowadays three quarters of the German pool of journalists are PC gurus and confessing Green supporters. Unfortunately it was in German only, that's why I did not post it. The tone of German mainstream media show these heavy biases, and very strongly so. I have started to evade heavily to niche media and blogs. Mainstream media nowadays sound like the official state television of the former GDR.

We have similiar strong tendencies amongst teachers and pedagogues over here, the union of theirs being extremely left-leaning.

[MH]

We have similiar strong tendencies amongst teachers and pedagogues over here, the union of theirs being extremely left-leaning.

So who do you rather be?
The good guy or bad guy?:haha:

[AndyJWest]

So Sky-falling-in is now complaining that Europe is running out of right-wingers?

[MH]

So Sky-falling-in is now complaining that Europe is running out of right-wingers?

Question is what "right winger" means to you.

[Penguin]

*sigh*
some explainations for the non-Krauts:

It is neither required for a journalist in Germany to have a certain party book, nor to have a certain ideology. This also goes for teachers (wtf do they have to do with photojournalism?)
Same as it's free for any leftie to start a banking career, it's free for any conservative to become a journalist. I would really like to read the study which says that 3/4 of all journalists in Germany are supporters of the Green Party.

That being said: objective photojournalism is a lie. In the moment someone enters a scene with a camera, the scene is different, manipulated, you always have another person in it, behind the cam. People often act differently when they know they are being recorded.
Picture manipulation/altering is as old a photography, often used for dramatic effect or enhancement, especially in social or war reports.

I'm also worried about the quality of journalism, but as in any trade, personal thoughts should not win over professionalism. That's why I don't see niche media as better or worse, it is always the quality of research which counts. "Sources" who just quote each other or just report some little bites without the context of the original source are sadly common, the size of the publication does not matter. Though I have often seen small blogs, especially from the loony fraction, just quoting each other. Just follow them, till you find the original mainstream media source :) (which often is about something totally different)

I linked to a great statement by an ex-reporter who he even calls himself a socialist (:huh:) about the future of journalism and its quality some days ago in another thread. Here is the link again: http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/journalistic_practice/wire_creator_david_simon_testi0719

A little about media bias in Germany - these are the biggest national daily newspapers in Germany, in numbers of copies in 2011: (for the amount of readers, multiply the numbers by about 3-4)

1. Bild 2.7 million (conservative) analogy for the Brits: The Sun
2. Süddeutsche Zeitung 418000 (center/left)
3. Frankfurter Allgemeine 360000 (conservative) British: The Times
4. Die Welt 252000 (conservative) British: Daily Telegraph
5. Handelsblatt 136000 (business/economics paper - not green :03:)
6. Frankfurter Rundschau 119000 (left-liberal) British: The Guardian
7. Financial Times Deutschland 100000 (business/economics paper - also not green) British: guess what?
8. Die Tageszeitung (taz) 53000 (left/green :huh:)
9. Neues Deutschland 36000 (authoritan-socialist) - ex gdr pravda

I tried to be neutral in judging the political tendency, though of course left/right is always a matter from where you look :) - however I don't see a terrible PC/left/green bias here...

(Source: http://www.print.de/Top-10/Top-10-Produkte/Ueberregionale-Tageszeitungen-verkaufte-Auflagen-laut-IVW-4.-Quartal-2011)

Note that we also have many regional papers here which also sell a considerable amount of copies, many of them more than the national papers, but I'm to lazy to write about them too, you can have a look at their numbers here (http://www.print.de/Top-10/Top-10-Produkte/Regionale-Tageszeitungen-Auflage)

Btw: here is the original article which includes some picture examples: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/growing-concern-that-news-photos-are-being-excessively-manipulated-a-898509.html

[Skybird]

*sigh*
some explainations for the non-Krauts:

It is neither required for a journalist in Germany to have a certain party book, nor to have a certain ideology.
This I have not said. I said that journalists are a heavily biased, green-left-leaning crowd that leave the journalism school and do not know crap about the basics of their profession, regarding basic writing and research skills, and thus produce heavily biased politically correct opinion pieces instead of sober, independently confirmed and verified-by-themselves fact reports. I also mentioned uncritical paste-and-copy, which you especially see in internet media.

Take this, that also is just some days old:

http://www.cicero.de/berliner-republik/einseitiger-journalismus-pressefreiheit-in-gefahr/54351?print

And yes, I stick to it, by political sympathy and voting habits, journalists of this new missionary branch by two thirds to three quarters are Green-red followers and voters.

What also should be said is that the political parties and minister presidents of the federal states take TREMENDOUS influence on the management decisions and content decisions of the state-run TV channels ARD and ZDF. That refers both to personnel decisions for prominent or key posts, and attempts of censorships in news reports.

The very very few TV reporters I may put some trust in, are all from a very old guard. They are a species that goes extinct.

I also refuse your generalization of all photos always being a lie, no matter how they are pre- or post-processed. While the photographed perspective is a reduction of the total reality it was taken from, the original article I linked describes a trend in digital manipulation that represents a far higher and serious degree of manipulation than just the way the original image was chosen top get shot. It also represents a further reaching intention. At least these three categories of image-making should be differentiated, I think: 1. being in a situation and just photographing what one sees in the event and/or situation, 2- then not shooting any scene, but intentionally choosing just some special, selected scenes and maybe even arranging them, and3. finally the digital, totally arbitrary manipulation of the RAW image afterwards, where only your skill in handling the software is the limits. The two latter are close to each other, and maybe identical by intention, but the latter allows more freedom. The first is the most distant both in intention, and possibilities.

[Tribesman]

A little about media bias in Germany - these are the biggest national daily newspapers in Germany, in numbers of copies in 2011: (for the amount of readers, multiply the numbers by about 3-4)

1. Bild 2.7 million (conservative) analogy for the Brits: The Sun
2. Süddeutsche Zeitung 418000 (center/left)
3. Frankfurter Allgemeine 360000 (conservative) British: The Times
4. Die Welt 252000 (conservative) British: Daily Telegraph
5. Handelsblatt 136000 (business/economics paper - not green :03:)
6. Frankfurter Rundschau 119000 (left-liberal) British: The Guardian
7. Financial Times Deutschland 100000 (business/economics paper - also not green) British: guess what?
8. Die Tageszeitung (taz) 53000 (left/green :huh:)
9. Neues Deutschland 36000 (authoritan-socialist) - ex gdr pravda

I tried to be neutral in judging the political tendency, though of course left/right is always a matter from where you look :) - however I don't see a terrible PC/left/green bias here...

So are you saying someone would have to be pretty far out on the loony right fringe to consider german journalism a socialist conspiracy?

[Skybird]

1. Bild (crap, Pawlovian)
2. Süddeutsche Zeitung (radical left/"progressive", very PC)
3. Frankfurter Allgemeine (moderately conservative)
4. Die Welt (centrist-slightly left)
5. Handelsblatt (business/economics paper)
6. Frankfurter Rundschau (left, very PC)
7. Financial Times Deutschland 100000 (business/economics paper - also not green) British: guess what?
8. Die Tageszeitung (communist, radical "progressive")
9. Neues Deutschland 36000 (authoritan-socialist) - ex gdr pravda

Corrected that for you. One should also mention Die Zeit (moderately left), Tagesspiegel (centrist), Spiegel (huge variance from conservative to very left, depends heavily on the writing crew doing an article), and FOCUS (turning news into showbiz mostly, I consider it to be something like PM - Peter Moosleitner's Interessantes Magazin...).

Explicitly critical of the state'S growing control over the citizens and the of the EU and the emerging EU superstate none of these medi a is, with the exclusion of Neues Deutschland which i simply do not know since I never cared to read even a single edition of it. - Truly liberal in the meaning of the original tradition of liberalism or libertarianism, none of these media is.

I personally read also sites and blogs and newspapers like this: FreieWelt.net, Richgard Herzinger's Freie Welt Blog, Ortner Online, Cuncti, Critical Science, Eigentümlich frei, Andreas Unterberger's Tagebuch, DetlevSchlichter.com, Wertewirtschaft.org, Ludwig von Mises Institut.com (German and Engoish sites), and I often switch to sites that get linked to in articles from the above.

And that are only the frequently visited German links I use.

[Tribesman]

So the biggest paper is basicly right wing populist crap and its owners also publish a conservative broadsheet which Sky thinks is somehow leftist:haha:

[Penguin]

a delayed reply, had to work on the holiday yesterday, doing some none-journalistic enhancements of reality :03:

This I have not said. I said that journalists are a heavily biased, green-left-leaning crowd that leave the journalism school and do not know crap about the basics of their profession, regarding basic writing and research skills, and thus produce heavily biased politically correct opinion pieces instead of sober, independently confirmed and verified-by-themselves fact reports. I also mentioned uncritical paste-and-copy, which you especially see in internet media.

Take this, that also is just some days old:

http://www.cicero.de/berliner-republik/einseitiger-journalismus-pressefreiheit-in-gefahr/54351?print

And yes, I stick to it, by political sympathy and voting habits, journalists of this new missionary branch by two thirds to three quarters are Green-red followers and voters.


This is only anectodical evidence, but I had a student working at my company who just recently graduated journalism school. From what I could tell from the classes and teaching materials, they still learn the basics of this profession, which an emphasis on research skills.
Her grad piece was about a comparision how certain topics are handled in a feminist magazine and a posh women's mag. Both outlets were critically analized and afaik thero was no pressure by her prof to write in either direction.
So the important stuff is still being taught, the education is ok - the students still get their Handwerkszeug. The question is how they use it. This is comparible with the baker, who still learns how to form bread by hand, though sadly the reality of the job in 2013 is often only heating up pre-fab loafs. :-?

Bok doesn't say anything different in his article - unlike you, he doen't deny that the basics of the trade are still taught in journalism school; the education is still there. Interistingly enough, Bok complain about the same things like David Simon in his testimony in fron of the US Congress: absence of keeping the nose to the ground. Simon said, that when he was a crime reporter, he hung around in cop bars, to him the bst possibility to get informed about what's really going on and to get the perception if the beat copper - what Bok calls "Volkes Stimme".
I see the same in our little local paper - which has a circulation of 330000 and is a conservative paper:). They just copy and past the press releases of the police department, seldom an investigation by themselves.

That being said, the bread and butter journalism for most local reporters in Germany is still being at exciting events like the opening of a new pool or reports about potholes. I say for most, as the numbers show that regional papers are still huge in Germany - next to tv the number one source of news of the majority, this will probably change over the next years when the web will be the No.1.

Still looking for a poll which confirms that 3/4 of the German journalists are confessing Greens. Btw: In the Cicero piece Bok claims it be 1/3, though also without quoting a source.
And what Bok writes about his perception of socialist politicians being in any political talk show, in comparision I just would like to point about how many ISM lobbyists are permenently sitting in talk shows.


What also should be said is that the political parties and minister presidents of the federal states take TREMENDOUS influence on the management decisions and content decisions of the state-run TV channels ARD and ZDF. That refers both to personnel decisions for prominent or key posts, and attempts of censorships in news reports.


Just a short remark regarding the public tv stations, as this is a whole new topic which extend the bounds of this discussion tremendously :
The influence of political parties, but also NGOs like churches or unions was intended. These organizations have been seen to represent the public opinion at the time when the broadcast treaty (Runfunkstaatsvertrag) was passed. The intention was not to make but to prevent a government-run media.

From my experience of 2 years working for a weekly political talkshow on public tv, I can tell you that I have not witnessed any censorship - mind you, I worked on a tech not a journalistic postion. The opinions from greens, islamists, communists - even those from conservatives were broadcasted as recorded. Though I have seen my amount of sloppy or outright terrible research.


The very very few TV reporters I may put some trust in, are all from a very old guard. They are a species that goes extinct.


I agree, but this streamlining out of fear to step on someone's toes is sadly something we don't only see in reporting but also in politics as a whole.


I also refuse your generalization of all photos always being a lie, no matter how they are pre- or post-processed.

I haven't written that, I said that "objective photojournalism is a lie"
Thankfully you write the arguments in your next passage: :D

While the photographed perspective is a reduction of the total reality it was taken from, the original article I linked describes a trend in digital manipulation that represents a far higher and serious degree of manipulation than just the way the original image was chosen top get shot. It also represents a further reaching intention. At least these three categories of image-making should be differentiated, I think: 1. being in a situation and just photographing what one sees in the event and/or situation, 2- then not shooting any scene, but intentionally choosing just some special, selected scenes and maybe even arranging them, and3. finally the digital, totally arbitrary manipulation of the RAW image afterwards, where only your skill in handling the software is the limits. The two latter are close to each other, and maybe identical by intention, but the latter allows more freedom. The first is the most distant both in intention, and possibilities.

In addition the choice of the point and the field of view, the angle, even selecting shutter speed or the exposore time is already where a manipulation, intentionally or not, already starts.
When developing analogue film, you could alter the meaning with a wipe of your hand - under/overexposing details of the pic, thus altering the original. Today you have a mouse in this hand.
I don't think the Spiegel article is bad, if it helps to put it into the minds of the public what should be common knowledge since the first cavemen painted their walls: image!= reality.


Corrected that for you. One should also mention Die Zeit (moderately left), Tagesspiegel (centrist), Spiegel (huge variance from conservative to very left, depends heavily on the writing crew doing an article), and FOCUS (turning news into showbiz mostly, I consider it to be something like PM - Peter Moosleitner's Interessantes Magazin...).


Süddeutsche -> radical left :huh:
So you are saying that the second biggest national paper in Germany wants to overthrow the state? A paper where even Goldman Sachs indirectly has shares and where other papers from the same owner took much crap for supporting the idiotic Stuttgart 21 project - something all the Green's are furios about? C'mon!

Same with Die Welt-> slightly left?
As Tribesmen in his charming way already pointed out: both Bild and Welt are owned by the same company, it's not uncommon for Springer journalists to switch between them. Die Welt has exactly one left writer: Broder.

And the only thing that was communistic about the taz is that until some 25 years ago, all employees got the same salary. The taz is just like the Greens a direct offspring of the '68 generation.

I agree with your assessment of Die Zeit - just pointing out that it is the still best weekly paper we have in Germany - next to the Jungle World - the best left paper, which sadly nobody reads...



I personally read also sites and blogs and newspapers like this: FreieWelt.net, Richgard Herzinger's Freie Welt Blog, Ortner Online, Cuncti, Critical Science, Eigentümlich frei, Andreas Unterberger's Tagebuch, DetlevSchlichter.com, Wertewirtschaft.org, Ludwig von Mises Institut.com (German and Engoish sites), and I often switch to sites that get linked to in articles from the above.

And that are only the frequently visited German links I use.

Though I don't mind reading different opinions, there's too much fear of Feminazis and too much Austrian economics cult for my taste to use them as daily new sources :D

[Skybird]

This is only anectodical evidence, (...)

Still looking for a poll which confirms that 3/4 of the German journalists are confessing Greens. Btw: In the Cicero piece Bok claims it be 1/3, though also without quoting a source.

Anecdotical or not, it finds representation in the quality I see throughout the media. The low quality is obvious and surpasses the well-researched and -written stuff by far, also, and that is even bigger a concern for me, it is the abusive, suggestive language being used, the phrasing that prevents fact-repeating and already educates people to have a certain wanted opinion. The politically correct way of talking.

The number stuff, three quarters of journalists sympathising with the Greens and the Left, I do not find and and do not recall the original article, it was from late last week. But when you take the 1/3 Green claim from Cicero Magazin, and then assume - just assume - another third or maybe even 5 or 10% more going for SPD and maybe also Die Linke - then you have the magical mark of 70-80% sympathising for the political left. It also shows in the main media's political bias as expressed in language and content of articles: by overwhelming majority the dominant main media call for a strong state, want more and more regulation, more and more EU, and express in general an opinion and attitude that simply is this: left, and often rightout socialist. The Frankfurter Rundschau just today had an editorial on that shrinking freedom and strong centralism and stronger state regulation are accepted by the hige majority of the population. Well. Die dümmsten Kälber wählen sich ihre Metzger selber.

Just a short remark regarding the public tv stations, as this is a whole new topic which extend the bounds of this discussion tremendously :
The influence of political parties, but also NGOs like churches or unions was intended. These organizations have been seen to represent the public opinion at the time when the broadcast treaty (Runfunkstaatsvertrag) was passed. The intention was not to make but to prevent a government-run media.

Counter-logical an idea, then. That is like saying lobbying by business lobbyists is done to strengthen democracy and the electorate'S vote. Also, I do not judge it by its intention (if it really where like you said), I judge it by its actual effect. Censoring and influencing has become worse and worse, may it be subtle in educating the rules and new terminology of political correctness, may it be direct intervention of party and government representatives in the program director'S offices (if you have watched German tV news over the couple of months, you must have noted that there have been a number of instances reported recently). Very popular: suggestive phrasing, and the invalid linking of two events, to push a wanted opinion by founding a statement with evidence that actually refers to something very different. This is what I mean by journalistic incompetence, amongst others. For example the Fukushima reactor accident now has killed several thousand people, because the way in which "journalists" wrote their pamphletes some months ago linked the killings not to the tsunami, but made it appear as if they died due to the reactor incident. That is like saying that building the Autobahn in the 30s last century has costed 60 million lives, as critics sarcastically commented. Why was it done? So many other examples that illustrate even an extreme amount of intellectual underhandedness of the writers, or a saddening lack of writing skill, mastery of the German language and lack of journalistic toolsets. The majority of the mass media do not inform, but do misinform us, and to think that the state could fairly and competently regulate it for more objectivity and quality, I find naive. To me the state is the most incompetent authority of managing all the tasks people demand him to do. Not to mention the desastrous financial argument speaking against it.


From my experience of 2 years working for a weekly political talkshow on public tv, I can tell you that I have not witnessed any censorship - mind you, I worked on a tech not a journalistic postion. The opinions from greens, islamists, communists - even those from conservatives were broadcasted as recorded. Though I have seen my amount of sloppy or outright terrible research.
See my reply above.


I agree, but this streamlining out of fear to step on someone's toes is sadly something we don't only see in reporting but also in politics as a whole.
Absolutely. But it also is done for ideological reasons. Genderism, feminism, EU, Islam being high on the to-do-list. Some of these themes are ideological drives coming from themselves, others are poushed in logical self-dynamic of the state trying to grab more and more control and power, the things and goals that libertarianism is criticising so heavily. We are on the way to the one-world-government. But it will be an oligarchic, unfree tyranny. Free trade zones and the EU centralization are just intermediate steps on the path to the ultimate goal.


I haven't written that, I said that "objective photojournalism is a lie"
Thankfully you write the arguments in your next passage: :D

I just wanted to cut the summary short. No hairsplitting needed.


In addition the choice of the point and the field of view, the angle, even selecting shutter speed or the exposore time is already where a manipulation, intentionally or not, already starts.
I called it the necessary reduction of reality in my earlier reply. It cannot be avoided, yes. Still, the intention to give it a twist, and the inevitableness of reducing the reality while doing your shot with this and no other exposure time, objective, and shutter setting, are two different things. The intention to do a technically good shot, and the intention to manipulate the viewer, are not the same.


Süddeutsche -> radical left :huh:
So you are saying that the second biggest national paper in Germany wants to overthrow the state? A paper where even Goldman Sachs indirectly has shares and where other papers from the same owner took much crap for supporting the idiotic Stuttgart 21 project - something all the Green's are furios about? C'mon!
I call the SZ one of the worst and manipulative papers we have, and yes, it is extremely far left-leaning. When I studied, us students agreed on that no matter the branches we were studying in. I wonder why Jakob Augstein is still with the Spiegel instead of the SZ, the SZ would be much more his natural home.


Same with Die Welt-> slightly left?

centrist to slightly left, yes. Some articles are pretty conservative sometimes, but more articles are obedient to the PC standards and are slightly left-leaning.


As Tribesmen in his charming way already pointed out: both Bild and Welt are owned by the same company, it's not uncommon for Springer journalists to switch between them. Die Welt has exactly one left writer: Broder.
I ignore Tribesman, so don'T try to argue with me over somebody of whom I take no note and do not know what he has produced this time. But Broder - left? He is a vbit like Pat Condell, and has his favourite issues: giving his attackers a bloody nose, Israel, Jewish issues, German and their collectively deranged mindset as a late consequnce of the second world war. I agree with broder on 3 out of 4 issues. On the one I do not, I usually would like to kick him into lunar orbit. But I respect him nevertheless, he is mostly right, and I like him for the way in which he does his things: mit Schmackes. Fearful softmumblers, split tongues and socially concerned careful whisper-voices we have enough. Especially in Germany.


And the only thing that was communistic about the taz is that until some 25 years ago, all employees got the same salary. The taz is just like the Greens a direct offspring of the '68 generation.
Again, I judge it by what it reaches in effects. The social model is propagates and where we would end if we would go according to TAZ's wisdoms, is a communist soceity, not more, not less. And that is the polite version of my view of it. There is a rude version in my mental pool of opinions, too, and that would not sound that nice and polite anymore if I would express it.


I agree with your assessment of Die Zeit - just pointing out that it is the still best weekly paper we have in Germany - next to the Jungle World - the best left paper, which sadly nobody reads...
It's a mixed bag, but all in all I hold a pragmatic attitude towards it that bases on live and let live.


Though I don't mind reading different opinions, there's too much fear of Feminazis and too much Austrian economics cult for my taste to use them as daily new sources :D
Some of them are theme-specialised platforms, so you should not be surprised. What else do you expect to read on a website on feminism and genderism, than feminism and genderism? Chess strategies? Unfortunately, the genderism issue is something of great concern and it does great damage and nobody cares and nobody wants to deal with it. I get mucz feedback on it becaseu I happen to have many teachers in my and my family's social network.The ideologistas behind it have hijacked major parts of the opinion-forming medias, the public education system and political stages pretty much like the so-called 68er once did with the justice system and education system. - Thesde are not the only blogs and sites I visit, but I did not systematically search for all links in my folder, and just listed those I probably click more often than the others.

LATE EDIT:

This opinion piece from FOCUS inlcudes some hints that are illustrating what I mean when complaining about the Deutungshoheit of the Greens and the Green having become at least as left as the socialists:

http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/fietz-am-freitag/kein-mohr-kein-tempo-kein-rauch-die-tugend-tyrannen-erobern-deutschland_aid_985772.html

Apparently I am not the only one seeing things the way I do. I see this creeping degeneration and rotting of our culture in too bright intensity and its symptoms becoming manifest in too many place, doing too much mind damage and economic damage, as if i could ignore it or just smile about it anymore. To be precise, it makes me wanting to vomit. We destroy our own freedom from within, needlessly, we kill our our worthiness, our survivability and ability to defend ourselves against those wanting to destroy us from outside. All in the name of a hopelessly naive Infantilisierung of ourselves and the way we see things and world issues, and also at the price of a suicidal mutual dependency of politics claiming to give people more nanny-service and relief from their privater responsibilities, and the Pöbel demanding more of everything and allowing more and more penetration of the political Gutmenschen and their ideological hobbies into our private sphere, our mind, our thinking - and like religion they try to infest already the youngest of our children with their sh!t. It has been argued by some that this Gutmenschentum indeed is a surrogate religion, and I agree. Even the same missonary fervor if not fanatism is there. You have to follow their lifestyle rules, else...

[Tribesman]

But when you take the 1/3 Green claim from Cicero Magazin, and then assume - just assume - another third or maybe even 5 or 10% more going for SPD and maybe also Die Linke - then you have the magical mark of 70-80% sympathising for the political left.
So if you take a number, double it, then add some more you can make it reach the figure you claimed it should be.
I know some plumbers who do maths like that, you can get yourself a new career:rotfl2:

[MH]

There is not such a thing as objective journalism , it is not valuable option to begin with.
Every journalist has his own political views and when writing about something it will come to play consciously or unconsciously.
May it be in more bold way or some subtle choice of words that may alter the way an article may be perceived.
If you live in a place that certain views are dominant and mainstream , naturally it will be mirrored in the media.
Journalist are not some special breed.
After all not every one who has good writing skills necessary has critical or analytical mind or is not prone to popular views.
If they do -it also does not mean they should be with your way of thinking...naturally.
Same goes for teachers and so on.....
It is sort of snowball that feeds itself not necessarily shaped from above.


Since your views Skybird may be on minority side you may feel the way you feel.