When I came across these photos, I couldn't believe my eyes. Yesterday on Fox and Friends, Fox News aired photos of New York Times reporters, calling them "attack dogs." In the photos, reporters Jacques Steinbert and Steven Reddicliffe became the victims of yellow teeth, a receding hairline, and exaggerated features.
The Fox hosts were upset with Steinberg's recent article "Fox News Finds Its Rivals Closing In" which declared that CNN and MSNCB have added viewers at "far more dramatic rate" than Fox, so far this election. When asked if the NY Times would respond to the image doctoring, the paper's Culture Editor Sam Sifton said no thanks: "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."
Fox News has found some pretty creative ways to outrage me lately. What should be done to address this visual dishonesty? To see the video, read more.
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Bwahahaha
1that's so childish! people who watch fox for their news content are complete morons.
2WOW THAT IS SO UNETHICAL.
3I would pay good money for a copy of the memo directing the Photoshop artists to do this!
4jude i was thinking the SAME thing, who gave that order? and did they sit around the computer chuckling?! and then the dog picture in the video? SO DISRESPECTFUL! i'm seriously shocked. (and i know i shouldn't be, it is fox after all...)
5IMO this is nothing more than tit for tat. N.Y.T. throws volley of jabs and Fox news returns with an upper cut to the face and the fight goes on and on and on.
What are we going to do? Now now play nice boys, I've go better things to do than worry about ratings wars.
6this is really dumb. GROW UP!
7It's really childish of Fox but I hope the Times sticks to its current stance and doesn't start responding - there's no way to look professional when you get involved in that kind of slap-fighting.
8It would be nice if they all stopped focusing so much on their ratings wars and started working harder on their reporting and journalism standards, but I guess the corporate infotainment media isn't about to do that, eh?
9Really it is just better to ignore this sort of behavior. They want the attention, if you don't give it to them they will stop.
10I don't think it's possible for me to adequately voice the total complete hatred and contempt I have for Fox. . . even I could, I wouldn't waste my time on these total morons and degraders of our society.
11Astounding. If they can do this, what else are they tweaking?
12How could the anchors do this story with a straight face?
I don't think this is any evidence that they are "tweaking" anything more serious. I also don't really think it's unethical. Childish, yes. Unethical, no. People overreact to so many things these days.
13I agree lilkimbo the N.Y.T. is not above such childishness themselves so I will not wast my sympathies on them.
14Hypno, you have to stop changing your avatar! It confuses me.
15The NYT tries to bolster MSNBC's and CNN's camps, because they are losing the ratings war, and Fox news calls those reporters attack dogs and pigs. There is definitely something going on under the radar between Fox News and the NYT. This is just childish. Funny, but childish.
16I guess I just don't find any humor in this. I agree, it's very childish and unethical.
17CINE!!!! Hi! I miss you.
18Lilkimbo, love you madly, but it is unethical for a news organization to alter someone's picture without clearly stating that it has been altered and why.
19Jude, I agree with you about paying more attention to reporting, but not just for Fox. CNN and MSNBC are just as bad, in my opinion.
20I disagree, but there's really no point in arguing this, as people have varying definitions of ethical.
21"I agree with you about paying more attention to reporting, but not just for Fox. CNN and MSNBC are just as bad, in my opinion."
Totally, lilkimbo--that's why I said "they all" (meaning all the major news outlets).
This whole ratings war thing is getting obnoxious and out of control. *sigh*
22no i think stephley is right -- and journalistic ethics aren't really debatable. they are set in stone. and THIS is unethical,stupid, and not even funny!
23Actually, they're not really set in stone and they are debatable.
24Ah, I see that you said all now, Jude. I read too quickly!
25Don't get me wrong, I think this was childish and not funny, but I feel unethical is too strong a word. It's kind of like the SCOTUS with pornography: Justice Potter Stewart famously said that he couldn't define pornography but that he knows it when he sees it. That's how I feel about defining "unethical."
26Sorry, lilkimbo I'm a Virgo I like change.
27Hey hypno, I got a quarter and two pennies for you then...
28I spent 20 years in journalism, as a radio and television news producer: altering the pictures would have been totally unacceptable and a firing offense. You undermind your own credibility with crap like that.
This is from the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics:
-Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
29— Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.
No worries, lilkimbo--I do the same thing sometimes
30I guess to me the question was whether Fox & Friends would be considered journalism or entertainment.
31I didn't really make that clear.
32You could also argue that it's satire and it was blatantly obvious that the images were altered.
33Haha UnDave why don't you save that for gas.
34Those also aren't "new photos," so the not distorting the content of news photos does not apply. There are many ways to interpret the journalistic code of ethics.
35Yeah, I could really use that teaspoon of gas...
36I meant "news photos" in #35.
37Oh, heavens, stephley, we agree on something. ::thumps head::
The poodle picture amuses me, because it's obviously satire.
Otherwise, I consider any doctoring of news photos, except perhaps objective cropping (i.e., for size, not to change the substance of the image) to be fraud.
However, I don't believe Fox is the only offender in this game.
Also, dinosaur newspapers are dying out, and they aren't willing to go quietly. The LA times has been contracting for years, now, and their subscriber base keeps falling. (A lack of objectivity may have something to do with that....)
38Well you're entitled, but I think you have way too low a standard of responsibility for your news organizations. They collectively have a serious impact on the decisions we make daily, and I don't think weak links or sliding ethical standards are acceptable.
39I guess it's because I don't get my news from Fox or any other cable news station. I have a much higher standard for "my news stations," but I don't really consider everything on cable news "news."
40Wait a second these are battlefield photos or photos of an incident.
So while they are in bad taste, they aren't misrepresenting anything important unless you consider the nose and forehead of journalists at NYT to be important.
Wasn't there a story a while back about a photographer who had used photoshop on some of the pictures from the Iraq? He added more smoke or something and all the news outlets ran those photos. And what about that "lost tribe" that turned out to be fake? Now THAT is a misrepresentation of something that of signifigance.
If some people are so ready to deem everyone who watches Fox as a moron and pooh pooh Fox as the ultimately evil in news and then turn around and DEFEND the NY Times?? Uhhh, I don't think so. Both are biased thats a fact, just in different directions.
41Oops typing got away from me I meant "These are NOT..."
42No, it's clear from the things you say that you don't rely on t.v. for information - like I said the other day, you are formidable.
43Thanks, steph. I feel the same way about you.
44Hey at least between the Wall E post and this one, we'll get some manufactured outrage from both sides today!
45I have watched fox b4 I guess I am a moron then
46Cab, no one said anyone was a moron. And it doesn't matter whether the pictures accompany a significant story or not - these accompanied a whine by Fox that they weren't getting their props from the Times. The news photographer did get in trouble for what he did. I didn't follow the lost tribe story so don't know how much air time it got. Any outlet that carried the pictures should apologize and if they were taken by a news photographer, they probably should be fired. But if a legitimate news photographer took them, they should have researched the story more anyway and found out it was fake.
That's one reason I hate 'citizen journalism' - its free to the professionals, fills time and space but is too unsupervised to be credible.
47people who watch fox for their news content are complete morons.
48In other news a Man gave birth to a baby girl today. anyone else amazed by it?
49Yawn, I feel like this is par for the course for Fox these days. Not surprising in the least. I think at some point they are going to self destruct from all the sh*t they've been doing. I wonder why they seem to think that presenting a non liberal point of view means you have to be childish and underhanded. Seriously, what happened to compassionate conservativism?
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