Controversial Ethics in Photojournalism

Everyone has ethics and morals that they follow that help them navigate through life. Morals help people make decisions like if someone in front of you drops a $100 bill, do you tell them or pick it up and keep it? This would fall under the umbrella of honesty. I think that an individual who admires honesty would give the $100 bill back to their owner. Sometimes in these situations where your morals are tested, you have to think about if the roles were reversed. If you dropped a $100 bill would you respect the person that takes it or the person that gives it back to you? Something that I admire along with honesty is loyalty. To me, I always want people surrounding me that will always be loyal and supportive of my decisions, right or wrong. I also admire faith. When I was young I really didn’t understand the point behind having faith and it wasn’t until recently that I discovered the importance behind it. 

With this being said, there are things in life that test your morals. One of them would be having the profession as a photojournalist. Photojournalists are faced with tough decisions when taking pictures. Sometimes the perfect picture causes the photojournalist to invade someone’s privacy, disrupt them at a time of vulnerability so how do they navigate through these situations and still maintain their own ethics? Photojournalists have to document verbs, mainly the interactions and reactions of people.  With this task, there is a large gray area where doing your job and maintaining your own personal morals overlap. There was a very controversial topic that arose when a New York Post freelance photojournalist had to draw a line between his morals and his job. A man was trapped in the lane of an oncoming subway, this is any person’s travel nightmare, but this photojournalist decided to snap the picture. Some people argue that the picture the photojournalist took was essential to the story, but other people argue that it was an unethical decision. 

After researching this situation, a man was charged for second-degree murder for pushing the man in the picture into the path of the oncoming subway. Could this man have been saved if the photojournalist had tried to help the man instead of stop and take a picture? The photojournalist responsible for taking this picture was R. Umar Abbasi. He appeared on the Today Show to talk about the situation and defend himself against the opinions of people around the world. When being interviewed about the photo Abbasi said there was “no way” he could have saved the man from the subway. Although Abbasi believed that it was out of his hands, in my opinion, Abbassi should have at least tried to save the man, as he would’ve have known if he could save him or not because he didn’t even try. After putting a lot of thought into this controversial situation, I do not agree with what the photojournalist did as it does not align with my ethics and morals. From the picture, it looks like the photojournalist seems closer to the man than the subway was and there were no other people remotely close enough to help the man. Even though a subway moves much faster than a human, Abbassi should have at least made an effort in saving the man and give him some sort of chance at living through this life or death situation. I think that Abbassi was this man’s only chance at life.

Although this is an extreme version of the ethics argument regarding photojournalism, there are many other instances where people are exposed in vulnerable situations. This man’s last moments were captured on camera instead of being spent trying to help him. Many photojournalists are put into similar less extreme situations every day in their jobs. Being a photojournalist is a high stress, dangerous job that requires quick decision making and the ability to prioritize their job from their morals. 

 

Photo by: R. Umar Abbasi/The New York Post

Photo by: R. Umar Abbasi/The New York Post