WYSIWYG... not!
By Eoghan Mac Cormaic
In George Orwell's novel 1984 the art of rewriting newspaper
stories and of falsifying photographs for political reasons
provided one of the most prophetic and enduring images of
totalitarianism.
Some critics point to Stalin as the source for most of Orwell's
imagery; infamously doctored photographs removed opponents and
created non-persons... It was all in there. For most of us,
however, the novel remained in the realm of fiction and the
nearest anyone could get to editing a picture was the famous
`airbrush' or a pair of scissors. All has changed, changed
utterly however, with the advent of new technology. And let's be
honest, while all this has a down side, there's also an up side
to it. It's only a matter of application.
I'm impressed to see that the Press Council - the British one,
that is - is considering introducing new standards to ensure that
in future photographs which have been edited are marked in some
way. This should alert readers to the fact that what they see is
not what the camera saw. It's not that the camera lies, it's more
that the camera's product is... enhanced. The reason for the new
ruling stems from the increasing habit of newspapers editing
images. What You See Is What You Get is no more.
Examples abound, some understandable, some not. When the Quinn
children were burned to death during the Drumcree siege this year
most newspapers carried a front page image of three brothers in a
studio shot. Some papers carried the same picture with the fourth
and only surviving brother standing behind the three victims. No
explanation was offered by the papers who had removed the older
brother as to why his image had been edited out, but in time of
tragedy it was probable that the newspapers wanted to report the
story in a particular way and the poignancy of three brothers in
one photograph, all dead, could not have been stronger.
Less forgivable however, is the practice of editing out
`undesirable' images. The Sun, that pillar of truth and fair
reporting in Britain was recently taken to task for `image
editing'. Publishing a shot of members of the England cricket
celebrating a victory - a rare image - the Sun photo editors
neatly removed a disabled woman from the image. They claim she
was removed to make room for a headline which was then not used
but we're left to wonder was it actually the woman or her
disability which offended the editors. The effect was the same: a
sanitised image of the crowd was presented.
What all this means to the public at large is debatable since
most people are indifferent in any case to the diet of lies and
half truths which many newspapers serve up on a daily basis. The
only difference now is in the medium. Until now the papers, by
and large, have been restricted to the printed word in their
inventiveness. New technology allows now for altering photographs
in a way that deceives more effectively, more subtly, than an
exaggerated story or an imaginary event could ever hope to
deceive. And while Republicans were excluded physically from
events for many years, now an editor can exclude an individual -
Republican, let's say - from a group photograph.
That's the down side. The upside is that - as the creators of the
Six Million Dollar Man once said - we have the technology. Indeed
we do. And if we have it, we should use it, that's my motto. I
can't understand all this fuss about not seeing a certain pair of
hands shaking. Five minutes on the computer would sort that out.
Beware David. We have ways of making you shake.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)