Having spent three years of college in the study of Bible, theology, and journalism, I entered the world of newspapers with a pretty good understanding of the ethics of news gathering.
That was back in the 1980s, when the basic tools of the news photographer were Tri-x black-and-white film and a chemical-based darkroom. Stories were entered into the computer and typeset on film, although you could still find a selection of old typewriters down in the office basement.
Yet even then, ethical standards varied from paper to paper. I remember taking a break from my work at the Canby Herald and watching an Oregonian photographer round up a group of children at the city park for a “photo shoot.” He had a little girl pose on the “duck” swing, then set up a shot with a young boy running past a mural on the park bathroom wall, which depicting a young boy running. They were fun photographs, a whole page printed in the next week's paper.
They were a lie, however, and the caption should have noted that the photographs were set up by the photographer. Manipulated reality is manipulated reality, whether the manipulation is in person or in a darkroom.
That was my own opinion, of course: Some photographers argue that it’s okay, others that it’s not. Since then, I’ve come to see that sort of “manipulation” as an ethical gray area.
When I came to The Dalles Chronicle in 1997, with 12 years in the fieldon my resume, it was to transition the newspaper from a film darkroom to photoshop.
Photoshop, a graphic information manipulation program, had already raised ethical concerns in the world of news and journalism.
I remember reading about a rather famous wildlife photographer whose book on animal migration was being criticized at the time — readers had noticed animals duplicated within some of the photographs, and the publisher admitted Photoshop had been used to “fill out” some of the scenes.
How could we possibly believe the photographs we saw in the news in the new world of manipulated reality?
At the Chronicle, we decided that we would do nothing in Photoshop that couldn't be done in a chemical darkroom. When “chemical darkroom” became meaningless to a new generation of photographers and readers, we adopted the simple standard that reality could not be manipulated, regardless of the tools used.
More importantly, the use of photographic techniques made possible by new technology would be clearly stated when the photograph was published: I was free to shoot a series of photographs and combine them into a “panorama,” an amazing tool for journalistic storytelling, but the technique was noted and clearly described in the caption.
Today we have come a long way from the “good old days” when President Clinton was pictured on the cover of the National Enquirer shaking hands with bug-eyed aliens.
Not only can photographers manipulate reality undetected, they can manipulate sound and video to create alternate truth that even those who understand the process will be hard pressed to detect.
Every week, “fake news” is circulated on social media and elsewhere. Facts are selected to suit the spin of one side or another, or simply manufactured outright with no regards to the truth.
Having worked in a half dozen newsrooms, led by a wide range of editors and publishers, I can say without qualification that the majority of newspapers make every effort to report the truth.
This means getting both sides on a controversial issue, accurately presenting a person’s statements, and fact checking statements that raise “red flags” as to their accuracy.
As a result, I rely on the information provided by the Associated Press.
Why? Every AP member newspaper is tasked with the same standards of reporting, and every story written or circulated by the AP is attributed to AP staff or the newspaper which first reported it.
As an editor at The Dalles Chronicle, I recently began publishing a weekly AP column titled “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week,” every Tuesday (space permitting). The feature is a roundup of some of the most popular, but completely untrue, social media headlines of the previous week.
The AP checks each of the stories it suspects are untrue, and offers the real facts. The best way to learn to recognize fake news, I believe, is to expose the lies.
— Mark Gibson
In the futuristic novel “1984,” written by George Orwell, one of the ways that “Big Brother,” the totalitarian state of Oceania, controlled the people was to frame the narrative that was fed to them. The lead character, Winston Smith, had a job as fabricator of fake newspaper stories at the Ministry of Truth.
His department was tasked with destroying old copies of newspapers, literature and films to substitute new versions with different information and numbers.
For example, Smith had to make a decrease in the allotted amount of chocolate that each citizen could buy look like it was actually an increase.
Smith defined his job as “the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another.”
You are witnessing the same rewriting of history by liberals on almost every front. The most odious remake of reality involves the failure of Obamacare, a government-run model of health care, which is now in a death spiral.
Although insurance providers have been withdrawing from the market for the past several years, news outlets are pushing the narrative that Republicans are responsible for this problem due to actions taken (or not) in 2017.
Even though not a single Republican voted for Obamacare in 2010, Democratic now claim that the health care law is a train wreck because GOP leaders and President Donald Trump (who has been in office only eight months) have generated too much uncertainty about what is going to happen next.
Let’s examine the facts:
• Insurance premiums have gone up by double digits since 2013, even though President Barack Obama promised costs would go down.
A Health and Human Services study shows that the average premiums have risen 105 percent in the individual market during the past four years. In some states, the increase has been over 200 percent.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that raising minimum requirements of coverage, forcing more coverage to be provided, boosting taxes, forcing high-risk patients into pooled plans and reducing options would raise costs.
• Remember Obama’s hollow promise that if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor?
Not when insurance companies are going broke due to regulations and unworkable business conditions. Millions of the plans people liked and wanted to keep have been cancelled because they didn’t meet the standards set by bureaucrats in D.C.
• Competition among insurers is declining precipitously in the individual markets, even though one of the stated aims of Obamacare was to increase competition.
There is now less choice than ever because, as rates have risen, healthy people have been dropping out and the share of sick people is on the rise.
Since the rates they can charge are capped, insurance business become less profitable and companies drop out.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has revealed that 1,332 counties across the United States will have only one health insurance provider by 2018, while 49 will have a big fat zero.
The 2,000-plus page bill that became commonly known as Obamacare was written by lobbyists and bureaucrats behind closed doors, and passed by people who never read it — so it was bound to fail.
Republicans have set themselves up to be blamed by “spin doctors” for the current problems due to their inability to repeal and replace the law.
It is no easy task to get rid of a socialist program once it is in play, which Obama was counting on when he spearheaded the charge to get the law through. Nevertheless, Republicans need to act.
Health care is only one area where fake news is being propagated to further political agendas. The ridiculous investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign is another — no evidence doesn’t stop the media from yammering away about the possibility that the 2016 elections was hijacked.
The purpose of spin is to get people to accept lies as truth. The present high level of deception would not be possible if citizens were grounded in the principles of the U.S. Constitution and truly understood how a republican form of government was supposed to work.
Fully informed citizens would be able to tell when politicians and broadcasters were feeding them a line of (cow excrement).
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” Thomas Jefferson.
— RaeLynn Ricarte
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