Say naux to faux

It really bums me out that the craft of photojournalism is dying. My roommate was a photojournalism major. When I first met her she was very passionate about photography, but just one year late she has switched her major, because she feels that there is no future in photojournalism, at least not one someone can make a living on.

It gets even harder when people are cutting corners. You can keep your journalistic integrity, but as a result take less spellbinding photos than the person who decided to alter the subject just a little bit. The cheater gets ahead and gets a better photo, and the true journalist is out of a job.

With the public's fascination with fascinating photos, it seems like it would be very hard to change this course of action. There could be more restrictions and guidelines placed on photojournalists, to ensure true photos, but at the end of the day the issue will always come back to money. More captivating, however altered they may be, will sell more. Why would a business try and restrain one of its best selling points?

With all of that said, I would argue that no photograph is a true, pixel by pixel reflection of reality. A photograph is the photographer's interpretation of reality. It is a photographer's decision what they are and aren't going to photograph. When you look at a photograph, you are not seeing everything, that is impossible, so as a default, you must see what the photographer has deemed most important.

The real problem comes in when this is taken to the extreme. There is a difference between deciding to take a picture of something that has actually happened, and changing what actually happened. This article reminded me of a news story I watched a few years ago. It wasn't "fauxtojournalism" but altered video, and I found it absolutely ridiculous.


In February 2011, Wisconsin's conservative governor Scott Walker cut collective bargaining. This effected many employees, especially teachers. Teachers could lose thousands of dollars because of these cuts. This caused a very large protest at the capitol.

It was so large, all the major news outlets were covering it. Including Fox news. Fox news, because of their conservative bias, backed Scott Walker and therefore wanted to make the protest look like it was a bunch of raging, unjustified crazy hippies.

This is where the problems come in. As part of their B-Roll, they showed a police horse, bucking in the air. As far as I know, there are no police horses in Madison, Wisconsin. I am not positive of this, though. If you looked behind the police horse, you would see palm trees. Palm trees. With leaves. I have lived in Madison for 11 years. There are no palm trees in Madison, Wisconsin. There are no leaves in February. This was clearly footage from some other protest in the past. It wasn't that crazy, it was a massive group of teachers at this protest, mind you.

This moment made me lose what little faith I could ever have in Fox news. That was such a blatant lie, I could not believe it. Not only was it an insult of my intelligence, but it was a beyond shady move. This fabricated footage changed the entire story. I know Fox wanted to show its viewers that they love so much exactly what they wanted to see, and they did. But I wonder how its loyal Foxies would feel if their beloved channel was lying to them? Hopefully not well.