Many people see the phrase “Truth in Journalism” as an oxymoron these
days. From such incidents as an NBC news crew blowing up a car to illustrate
the dangers of a particular brand of automobile, to a reporter for the Boston
Globe who admitted that she created sources in order to better tell a story, the
public is left wondering what in journalism is really true and what is fabricated.
This mistrust extends to the photographs used in news stories. With digital
manipulation, for instance, photographs can be seamlessly altered to reflect
whatever the photographers or editors wish to show. When the O.J. Simpson
murder case was the biggest news story of the day, the picture of Simpson on
Time’s cover had noticeably darker skin than the same mug shot picture featured
on Newsweek or on other prominent news magazines (see fig. 1-1). When the
public became aware of the altered photograph, Time justified the manipulation
by calling the picture “cover art,” and therefore not subject to the same standards
as straight news photographs. Adam Clayton Powell III wrote, “The editors
argued that it was not unethical, because Time covers are art, not news, a