JOUR90027 Chap.8 Photojournalism and the Ethics of Crisis Images
Photojournalism and the Ethics of Crisis Images
Week 8 asks what photographs do in a crisis. Susie Linfield's essay after the Uvalde shooting accepts the case for seeing violence but argues that images are slippery, start arguments rather than end them, and rarely change policy on their own; her examples run from Emmett Till to the Caesar archive.
The chapter covers privacy and dignity, verification tools for spotting fake images, and John Ellis's concept of the mundane witness, the everyday viewer who cannot say they did not know. It finishes with a model paragraph for essay prompt 8 on the duties of photojournalists. The module's recommended reading on AP's reporting from Mariupol and Reuters' report on Danish Siddiqui adds the practitioner's view.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The case for seeing: images that bring suffering close
- 02
Linfield: seeing and doing are not the same
- 03
Privacy, dignity and the ownership of images of the dead
- 04
Verifying images: reverse search and the InVID toolkit
- 05
Ellis's mundane witness and its three elements
- 06
Essay prompt 8: duties to subjects and to the public
Worked example · free
Should this photograph run?
- 1Verify the image's date and location before anything else.
- 1Weigh its value as evidence of an officially denied attack, drawing on Ellis's idea of witnessing.
- 1Weigh the child's dignity and privacy, and whether consent is possible.
- 1Decide, considering cropping or obscuring the face to keep the evidence while protecting the child.
- 1Temper the expected impact with Linfield's caution that images rarely change policy alone.
Key terms
- Quasi-acquaintance
- Quasi-acquaintance is Ellis's term for the familiarity viewers feel with people they know only through screens, a second element of mundane witness.
- Reverse image search
- A reverse image search is a verification method, using tools such as Google, TinEye or Yandex, that finds earlier copies of a picture to check its origin.
- Forensic attitude
- The forensic attitude is Ellis's description of viewers trained to interrogate media accounts, partly by forensic television dramas.
- Caesar images
- The Caesar images are the 55,000 photographs of Syrians tortured in prison that Linfield says had zero political effect.
Photojournalism and the Ethics of Crisis Images FAQ
Do shocking photographs change policy?
Linfield argues they rarely do on their own. Images supported movements already under way, as with Emmett Till, but famine pictures from Somalia were followed by a hasty retreat and the Caesar archive changed almost nothing. People, not photographs, create political change.
What is a mundane witness?
It is John Ellis's term for the everyday position of viewers who see fragments of distant events through broadcast media, judge testimony from a distance and receive the broadcaster's constructed account, which gives them awareness and a responsibility to know rather than a duty to act.
How do I check whether a crisis photo is real?
The Week 8 module points to a guide on spotting fake photos and to reverse image search through Google, TinEye or Yandex, plus the InVID toolkit, so you can find earlier copies and check where and when a picture was taken.
Who owns photographs of victims?
Linfield raises the question after the Sandy Hook shooting, when some parents pushed for a Connecticut law, SB 1149, barring disclosure of images of homicide victims. She asks whether such images belong to police, the FBI, parents or the public, and how privacy weighs against the right to know.
Assessment move
Read Linfield and list each historical image she uses with the outcome she reports; the list is a ready evidence bank for prompt 8. Then read Ellis's chapter, starting on the page the reading list specifies, and note his three elements of witnessing in your own words. Practise the verification tools on one widely shared image from a current crisis before you rely on any picture in your own work.
Pair every image you discuss with a sentence on its verification and a sentence on whose dignity is at stake. The further reading on Sontag, Tait and Tester offers longer theoretical treatments if you choose prompt 8.
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