A picture tells 1001 words

This weeks blog entry is based on the week one reading Tabloid Deconstruction by niall lucy, which I must say is a difficult piece of writing to get through, especially it being the first academic writing ive read in several months!

After eventually getting through it though, and yes it did take time, I slowly came to understand a few of the arguments that Lucy posed, one of which equates photographers as journalists also. Or should that be vice versa? I specifically like the quote in the reading where he writes, “…image-objects are not image-objects at all, but simulacra”,(p28) thus likening the art of images and storytelling to situations that we have already experienced and what is familiar to our cultural context.

Discussion in class brought up the issue of photography indeed being a form of journalism and the ethics associated with what ideas and connotations pictures bring.  Lucy’s article on page 24 states that “what distinguishes the moment of capture is that it is immediate: this was and here, now, it is.” It can be argued though that pictures do not tell the complete account despite the old adage ‘a picture tells a thousand words.’

While it only takes a millisecond for the camera shutters to snap what is in front of it, quality time has been taken in ensuring that the setting is perfect, there is a sufficient amount of light in order to set the mood of the shot and indeed, even the exact angle has been calculated as to where the lens should aim.

By saying this, it could therefore be argued that the image itself has been aligned to what the journalist wants their news story to achieve, and in a worse case scenario, be publishing news for self benefit as opposed to public want or need, obviously against the journalistic code of ethics. Furthermore, while the individual journalists have ideas about how they want there reports to be portrayed, there is no way of knowing exactly how varied audience groups will perceive it. Again, in Tabloid Deconstruction, Lucy mentions, “ textual references are never independent of their contexts, so that textual referents are not pre-given but produced.’ (p29) Situations arise where news stories as well as photographs become influential even though it truly wasn’t intended. But as the above statement alludes to, opinions are not only created by those who write the news, but also the people the news is written for. Social, cultural and economical contexts all play a role in our belief systems, and it is albeit impossible to have every single person in this digital world believing in the same way.

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