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02/03/2005 12:48:47 AM · #1 |
There is way too much of this going on.
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02/03/2005 01:01:08 AM · #2 |
I'm always on the side of our constitutional rights, but there is a matter of measured discretion one should exercise when in possession of a camera. The officer went beyond his legal boundaries in this case, but did he go beyond his moral duty? The photographer should have had the sense and the decency not to photograph the injured man if indeed that is what he did. Take pictures of the helicopter, the crushed up van or the paramedics, but have some respect.
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02/03/2005 01:12:55 AM · #3 |
That's the feeling I got while reading the story.. that a line was crossed by the guy photographing the injured man.. It's just not something I'd want to do, or look at in any publication really.
But.. other people do, and photographs like that do probably sell, and that's just the type of society we live in I guess.
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 01:13:33.
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02/03/2005 01:14:35 AM · #4 |
So are you saying that since the officer had a moral duty to do what he did it was ok?
If we are going to protect our rights we have to protect everyone’s even those people who you might not agree with. It does not matter whether you think the photographer was being a jerk or not, the important thing is that the police are not the ones who get to decide what gets photographed and what does not.
If the cop wanted to he could have talk to the photographer and suggested that this might not be the best think to photograph, but that is not what he did.
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02/03/2005 01:19:52 AM · #5 |
nsba,
That sounds good and reasonable, but it can't be applied in any "legal" sense. We can all agree, perhaps, that photographers should show compassion and discretion in what they depict, not photograph mangled human bodies and so forth, but the law has no business interfering with this. There are all sorts of issues involved, and where does one draw the line?
Ever wonder how many families of war-time casualties saw their own flesh and blood in the media? Think of Capra's WWII work. Should this not have been done? Should it not have been published? Of course it should have, we all need to be made aware of the very brutal reality of war, lest we become complacent.
Now, hanging out at an accident scene and photographing bodies, if this is what he did (the story's not clear) is perhaps less admirable than being a frontline photographer in a major war, but the principle is the same in the eyes of the law. We can't have freedom of speech without allowing some people to abuse that freedom. It's as simple as that.
I blame it all on the internet, actually. Too easy to "publish" images, and people go bonkers trying to stop it from happening.
But I'm in agreement with Scott; too much of this crap is going on. It feels like fascism when it happens.
Robt.
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02/03/2005 01:30:55 AM · #6 |
I have to agree that the photographer was within his rights and should be supported. As for the moral issue, nothing about this write up suggests that the photographer gave any indication that he would misuse the photographs.
I think, as the police officer in this scenario, I would have asked the photographer to please refrain from releasing any photographs until the family had been notified, and offered my number as a contact to insure this.
This photographer could have been one of us trying to get a shot for "Pain". (I probably will not enter this one.)
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 01:33:31. |
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02/03/2005 01:37:34 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by scottwilson:
So are you saying that since the officer had a moral duty to do what he did it was ok?
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No. What I am saying is if that was my brother mangled up on the ground there and some photographer came up and started snapping away, journalist or not and knowing well that I would be legally in the wrong and would probably have to pay the consequences, that old boy would be leaving in the next ambulance if he began shooting after I asked him not to.
If a photographer got up in your face while you were walking down the street minding you own business and he started taking your picture do you think you have the right to ask them to stop? Well the guy all busted up on the ground had no way of exercising his right to ask the man to stop, so in his interest the officer defended his rights for him.
I'd be damned if I would want to have someone point my son's picture out to me on rotten.com. Anyone who would exploit an injured and defenceless person in their worst moment for a few dollars is lower then shit.
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02/03/2005 01:53:47 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by bear_music:
nsba,
That sounds good and reasonable, but it can't be applied in any "legal" sense.
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I didn't say that the officer should not have been reprimanded. I said considering the rights of the victim I think he did the right thing. Not the legal thing.
Originally posted by bear_music:
Ever wonder how many families of war-time casualties saw their own flesh and blood in the media? Think of Capra's WWII work. Should this not have been done? Should it not have been published? Of course it should have, we all need to be made aware of the very brutal reality of war, lest we become complacent.
Now, hanging out at an accident scene and photographing bodies, if this is what he did (the story's not clear) is perhaps less admirable than being a frontline photographer in a major war, but the principle is the same in the eyes of the law. We can't have freedom of speech without allowing some people to abuse that freedom. It's as simple as that.
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I think the realities of war dictate that is in the victim's better interest if a photographer is there to show the world what atrocities and injustices are going on.
I do strongly believe in our right to photograph something when we see an injustice or something that is newsworthy or something we find of interest but not at the pain of others for the mere gain of money.
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02/03/2005 01:58:49 AM · #9 |
If you are in a public area, an area where you have no expectation of privacy, then you have no right to stop a photographer from photographing you. You can ask him too stop but he has the right go right on shooting. There are limits as to what he can do with the photographers he take but very few limits on taken them.
This right might be put to uses that we don’t agree with or even anger us but it is an important right. It is part of being a free and open society. If we start to say what can and can not be photographed then we will have to have someone in charge of what can and can not be photographed, pretty scary if you think about that for a bit.
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02/03/2005 02:04:19 AM · #10 |
Originally posted by scottwilson:
You can ask him too stop but he has the right go right on shooting.
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This may be true, but I would think that any photographer with that attitude better have comprehensive health insurence.
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02/03/2005 02:13:15 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
Originally posted by scottwilson:
You can ask him too stop but he has the right go right on shooting.
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This may be true, but I would think that any photographer with that attitude better have comprehensive health insurence. |
I think you better have a very good lawyer, as many have found out. |
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02/03/2005 02:19:32 AM · #12 |
Originally posted by scottwilson:
Originally posted by nsbca7:
Originally posted by scottwilson:
You can ask him too stop but he has the right go right on shooting.
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This may be true, but I would think that any photographer with that attitude better have comprehensive health insurence. |
I think you better have a very good lawyer, as many have found out. |
Not a problem. You do what you feel you have to do. Anything less is less then true.
(see? there's that prosody prodigy thing coming out again)
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 02:22:53.
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02/03/2005 02:27:11 AM · #13 |
nsbca,
Actually I have something like that in a poem I did:
Anything less than the truth becomes too much
in the inverted fiction of the heart.
:-0
Robt.
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 02:27:28.
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02/03/2005 02:44:41 AM · #14 |
Originally posted by bear_music:
nsbca,
Actually I have something like that in a poem I did:
Anything less than the truth becomes too much
in the inverted fiction of the heart.
:-0
Robt. |
Yea, that's what i meant.
But seriously we are here thinking of this event in abstract terms. Hell that was just some poor slob bleeding out on the ground. What that photog did was no big deal. He was well within his legal rights, right?
So as we are talking legal terms here I will assume that we are all afforded equal protection under the law. If we agree on that premise then let us look at this from another hypothetical point of view.
Yours.
Let us say that is not just some poor slob bleeding out, but that you just wrecked your car and that is your 8 year old son lying on the grass bleeding out. Some hack photographer comes up and starts photographing your son. What do you do? Do you cause him to stop or do you politely move out of his way so as to not violate his legal rights?
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02/03/2005 02:59:23 AM · #15 |
Well there is nothing that says you have to be polite to him, you have a legal right to tell him he is a low life.
Buy as to your question, if it were my 8 year old bleeding on the ground I don’t think I would even be aware of what was going around me.
I should be clear the I myself don’t photograph people who wish not to be. If someone were to ask not to be photographed, which has not happened yet, I would not photograph them. I don’t like pushy photographers and I believe that people will get angry at them for a good reason.
But I will defend their right to photograph in a public place regardless of who or what they are photographing. If we do not guard this right who gets to draw the line of what we can and can not photograph? There is a price we pay for our freedoms and liberty and one of those is that people will be free to do things that we wish they would not do.
There are many countries where you don’t have the right to photograph as you please in public places, none of which I would ever want to live in.
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02/03/2005 03:01:03 AM · #16 |
If he's in my face I ask him to back off. If he's interfering with anything I ask him to back off very forcefully. If he's working in the background, I have more important things to worry about, now don't I? I think the protection of a grievously wounded person, be it my child or a stranger, from someone taking pictures is a fairly ridiculous misallocation of priorities.
Earlier, you justified the making of "newsworthy" images. That's really a key thought there; who's to define what's "news" and what's not? If the tragedy is big enough, there will be (there always are) swarms of photographers and cameramen jockeying for position. The "best" of their work will show up on network television and on the wire services. Now this event was a "minor" tragedy, so to speak, although I'm sure it's not minor to the victim and his family.
So where do you draw the line? A couple of planes in the WTC is news for sure, thousands dead. Waco. The Donner party, had there been photographers along. A man dying on a mountain, alone in a crevasse. All news, some gets covered some doesn't. This accident is news to the local paper, even if the NY Times won't touch it. Where do we draw the line?
You, as an individual, can draw the line on things that affect you and your family directly, or you can up to a point (try stopping the press from photographing your son as they haul him out of the house on a major cocaine bust), but you have to be willing to pay the consequences if you physically interfere with another person who is acting within his legal rights, even IF he's being (in your eyes at least) an asshole.
But no peace officer has the right to do that. They are sworn to uphold the law. The issue here isn't what YOU would do, it's what a POLICEMAN actually DID do. See the difference? He can't make his own rules for your benefit. If it was your son, and you were there, and you asked the officer to "stop that man taking pictures", he does not have the power to do that unless the photographer is in some way trespassing or interfering.
When any peace officer, indeed any representative of the state, takes it upon himself to act out of moral conviction rather than under the letter of the law, he is being irresponsibly derelict in his duties. These people are supposed to uphold the law, work within the law, not use their power to intimidate and harass individuals engaged in lawful activity, no matter how tasteless, rude, or inane that activity may seem to them or others.
Robt.
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 03:02:15.
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02/03/2005 03:25:20 AM · #17 |
Originally posted by bear_music:
When any peace officer, indeed any representative of the state, takes it upon himself to act out of moral conviction rather than under the letter of the law, he is being irresponsibly derelict in his duties. These people are supposed to uphold the law, work within the law, not use their power to intimidate and harass individuals engaged in lawful activity, no matter how tasteless, rude, or inane that activity may seem to them or others.
Robt. |
I buy that and agree with the premise, but I think we could have picked a better poster child. There are plenty out there.
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02/03/2005 03:38:05 AM · #18 |
Aha! But nowhere in the article does it say that the photographer refused to stop taking photos after being asked not to. All indications are that the photographer complied with the police request.
Originally posted by article:
He was approached by Laird and told to stop. Laird ordered Bolt to erase the pictures he had taken.[...] Laird told Bolt he had to delete the pictures[...] |
I was in a similar situation with a crime scene under investigation (an entry here, actually). It was published by the local paper. The police asked me to "please not take photos while we move the body". Simple enough request, and I complied. After that, and on a following crime scene, the officer in charge invited me to shoot any future crime scenes where he was present, inside the tape. However, the whole experience left a foul taste in my mouth and I don't shoot that stuff any more. My own moral obligation.
In the situation under discussion, the officer went beyond his "moral obligation" or even reasonable request here and essentially pulled the film from this man's camera. It just happened to be digital, so the process was more involved. I think the only reason the camera was given back to the photographer was because the officer didn't know HOW to erase the photos.
Message edited by author 2005-02-03 03:38:55. |
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02/03/2005 03:41:33 AM · #19 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
Originally posted by bear_music:
When any peace officer, indeed any representative of the state, takes it upon himself to act out of moral conviction rather than under the letter of the law, he is being irresponsibly derelict in his duties. These people are supposed to uphold the law, work within the law, not use their power to intimidate and harass individuals engaged in lawful activity, no matter how tasteless, rude, or inane that activity may seem to them or others.
Robt. |
I buy that and agree with the premise, but I think we could have picked a better poster child. There are plenty out there. |
It is all too easy to defend the rights of those we agree with and all to easy to look the other way for those we don’t. But if we do this then we are only helping erode our own rights.
The issue here should not be what the photographer did but rather what the police officer did. Every time this kind of thing happens we should call attention to it.
There seem to be more and more stories of this kind of thing happing to photographers, I find this terrifying. Where would the line be drawn, would we keep a witness to the accident from describing what he saw? What about abuse of any kind by the police? should this be photographed.
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02/03/2005 03:43:40 AM · #20 |
| I agree with bear_music, the pig was out of order, just another case of police brutality |
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02/03/2005 03:50:04 AM · #21 |
Originally posted by Pano:
I agree with bear_music, the pig was out of order, just another case of police brutality |
Putting it this way is like putting gas on a fire, not exactly what we need right now.
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02/03/2005 06:43:13 AM · #22 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
Originally posted by scottwilson:
You can ask him too stop but he has the right go right on shooting.
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This may be true, but I would think that any photographer with that attitude better have comprehensive health insurence. |
Do remember to be careful when picking up that soap in the prison showers, won;t you *laugh*
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02/03/2005 08:01:08 AM · #23 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
... but there is a matter of measured discretion one should exercise when in possession of a camera. The officer went beyond his legal boundaries in this case, but did he go beyond his moral duty? The photographer should have had the sense and the decency not to photograph the injured man if indeed that is what he did. Take pictures of the helicopter, the crushed up van or the paramedics, but have some respect. |
You're kidding me, right? I don't care if he was taking pictures of a naked guy that just got ran over by an 18-wheeler. The fact of the matter was, moral or immoral it doesn't matter. He had every right to be there and take pictures and the cop stepped over the boundaries, legally, and forced the law-abiding citizen to do something he had no right to use his power to do.
I think the police department should be sued for a million dollars. That will send a message those ignorant cops can understand!
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02/03/2005 08:40:35 AM · #24 |
My feeling on the issue is that we can't have THE STATE sanctioning the restriction of photography in public places. However, if a photographer is being a weasel and preying on the misfortune of others it both hurts the "profession" and the photog may run into "private" problems. I'm not talking about Brad Pitt breaking a camera or ordering a bodygaurd to beat up paparazzi, Take the following example:
You are in a "public" place, in front of a church, say, at a close relative's funeral when the casket falls and a leg pops out and somebody pulls a canon sureshot out of their pocket and snaps away.
As a member of the dead guys family, you have a duty to throw that little point and shoot like Donovan Mcnabb. Or to be more genteel, ask the photographer to stop. If the photog keeps shotting and says "its a public place" I suggest you provide a public display of affection and bury the phone deep into one of the photog's orifices. And if he sues you or presses charges- let it go to a jury- no group of your peers will protect that scumbag.
Thats a ludicrous example, but the general public owes it to itself to protect its privacy, not the police. I am not encouraging vigilante violence, just "forceful maintenance of public respect" - |
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02/03/2005 08:49:52 AM · #25 |
Originally posted by blindjustice:
Thats a ludicrous example, but the general public owes it to itself to protect its privacy, not the police. I am not encouraging vigilante violence, just "forceful maintenance of public respect" - |
Indeed is a ludicrous example, and call it what you want but you are encouraging vigilante violence
If that was the case we would have to stop the World Press Photo contest from happening as 50% of the pict are from desperate situations which in one way or other could harm some one's feeling
How ever this is about a 'pig' abusing his power and not a relative of the victim reacting on an intrusion
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