Gray Areas in Black-and-White Photos

On Oct. 25, the New York Times published an Editor’s Note admitting that a photograph it ran the month before had in fact been posed by its photographer, Edward Keating. Despite a more than 30-day lag between the publication of the photo and its correction, the issue is apparently closed at last.

The question of whether Keating did something wrong in directing the subject of his photograph might seem easily answered, despite Keating’s insistence—as reported in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)—that he is innocent of any improper activity.

We expect news photographs, like news stories, to give us privy access to what really happened, unadulterated by any hint of their authors’ opinions. “The New York Times’ policy on posing news pictures, unofficially speaking, is that we don’t pose them, period, ever,” wrote Philip Gefter, the Times’ Page One picture editor, in an e-mail Tuesday. “Posing a subject (or subjects) of a news story changes the meaning of a picture from fact that is reported to information that is manipulated.”

And yet there is something reductive about this view, fundamentally sound though it is. A photographer is always able to convey his or her personal opinion with provocative selection and framing of a snapshot’s subject—far more easily than can the author of a news story. Especially in a case like Keating’s, where the image provided anecdotal color rather than documentary evidence of news, is a photograph ever anything more than “information that is manipulated?" Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the CJR and one of the leaders of an inquiry into Keating’s photo, echoed this question. “There’s an evolving definition of what’s acceptable,” he told me. “When you’re out on a difficult assignment and trying to illustrate a story, there are many gradations” of subtle influence, suggestion and outright posing of subjects, some more objectionable than others. Ultimately, said Cunningham, “there are things a photographer will do which don’t fall under strict, textbook guidelines” of the kind Gefter mentioned. Cunningham stressed that such photographs, taken while reporting, must be accompanied by “upfront,” full disclosure. But in many cases, these things may go unnoticed.

And this is the real problem: presently there is only a vague system in place for ensuring that news photographs that fall into what Cunningham repeatedly referred to as the “gray area” of illustration are identified as such. In this case, the Times’ initial inquiry ended in a mire of conflicting accounts. The inquiries, moreover, only began after tips were received from other photographers who happened to witness the action—an unreliable system at best.

It is essential that the New York Times, and all other publications that regard themselves as forums for serious journalism, develop a more rigorous system for preventing news photographers from posing their subjects.

Granted, tight deadlines and a huge quantity of incoming photos mean that there is little that can be done beyond reinforcing the traditional moral imperative of journalistic integrity. But images like Keating’s are robbed of none of their affecting punch by the knowledge that their creators fabricated them, and they should not go unpublished.

Rather, these photographs should simply be accompanied by a prominent caption indicating their less-than-objective provenance. Newspapers must eliminate the gray area by policing, as strictly as possible, those photographs that are posed and being passed off as news. But they must also attack this vague middle ground from the other direction, instituting a clear way of identifying photographs of news-related events that are not dishonest, but just products of their snappers’ creative vision.

Without these two measures, news photographers, avant-garde and unscrupulous alike, will continue to be able to pass their posed photos under the radar of journalistic-integrity policies, by a fault as much the system’s as their own.

—SIMON W. VOZICK-LEVENSON