The News-Press editor, Terry Eberle, has an editorial this a.m. about Lee County Schools preventing photographers from attending local proms. Eberle said he wanted to publish photos from the events as a way to "help the students celebrate the moment" and gives the district a good lashing for refusing the paper's request.
Eberle comes as close as he can to saying the newspaper wouldn't turn this into an opportunity to publish scandalous or gotcha photos (though do note that he DOESN'T say the paper would withhold publication of negative images), and there are indeed some interesting problems this offer must have raised for the school district that make me sympathetic to Eberle's argument. But I wonder if Eberle has fully thought through what the NP would do if, in their capacity as co-celebrants of Lee County High School proms, photographers DID stumble across a drunken brawl or students passing a joint around or engaging in other activities that wouldn't ... well, ... help the students celebrate the moment so much as get them in serious trouble and heap scads of bad press on the district.
I'll reserve my own thinking on this question for class discussion, but what are your thoughts? I'd like to see some thoughtful comments on this one, since it gets to precisely to a problem we've been discussing all term: what are the reporter's ethical commitments and obligations? Is the prom photographer from the NP primarily a fellow citizen of the school district helping students celebrate, as Eberle implicitly contends, or an independent journalistic documentarian obligated to depict the fuller scope of the event - warts and all? And what happens if the event goes south and the photog's citizen role is pitted against her role as a journalist?
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I think Eberle is angry that he's somehow unqualified to cover a high school dance.
ReplyDeleteEberle created the News-Press watchdog journalism site, a page all but dedicated to disproportionate representation, then has his feelings hurt when the school district won't let him cover a student event. Stop the presses, guys.
The idiotic altruism that Eberle is mourning for is the one he killed. His crocodile tears over the one student out of a hundred hardly conceals the almost palpable way he chomps the bit throughout the article.
The hard part about this topic for an article is that a reporters job is to 'seek and report the truth' so in the case where the photographer were to stumble across students par-taking in inappropriate behavior the reporters job description and ethics are put to test. Because although the reporter/photographer would be there to cover the event, they would have to consider the idea that this behavior is part of the event, or does one become passive on that topic and cover the glamours of prom?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I would aim to tell about prom and the wonderful night it was and even use the cliche phrase 'fairytale night' because that is what prom is made out to be. There will always be those kids drinking in the corner or smoking outside but I feel like reporting on those small events at prom misses the big picture which would be prom itself and the expectations that it holds for high schoolers.