Essay Response #1

“The greater access for journalists it not about supporting or opposing war. The camera lens, if used professionally and responsibly, captures real moments and relays visual information.” When you open a newspaper, online journal or magazine the articles that grab your attention are the ones that accompany a picture that reinforces your caption. Words are powerful but as the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words. Even if that were true how do you know these pictures are portraying a message that is to powerful for people to handle?

Journalists are responsible for bringing the news to the people. They travel all over the world reporting stories about happiness, life, death and tragedy. But as we all know life is not perfect and we don’t live in a perfect world. So why should people be made to think that life outside their everyday norm is?

Our music, news and pictures are censored to what people want us to know and hear. How can we be informed of things that are going on if we are only told the “good” part of the story? I personally believe that we should be exposed to the world and how it really is, not this sugar coated version of life that we see day to day. We should be able to see what is happening over in Iraq or the destruction that is happening in not only in our country but in countries all over the world.

The dictionary defines a disturbing image as something that is upsetting or dismaying. I believe that is exactly what the people reading these articles need to see. They need to be aware of the truth and maybe realize that they need to be part of the solution. Pictures are powerful thoughts capturing the truth. People are always saying “if only I knew I would have done something” by showing them these images they now know and they have no reason not at least try to do something to change the course of these horrible actions. Good can come out of these images if you direct people in the right way. The pictures are there to let people think about how they are living there lives. But with every amount of information these pictures bring us there is only so much that people can take.

Some articles can be told without the use of graphic images. Pictures make writing a reality. In the article by Ryan Pitts, he shows five different articles that portray stories that raise the bar on censorship. In photo story two and five the pictures tells the story without you even having to read the article beneath the caption. This is a single person being shown to the world the way they were killed. This was someone’s son, father, husband or friend portrayed to the world in the most gruesome stage of their life, dead. This is where I find censorship to be necessary. You are portraying one person that has had their death shown to the entire world just as it was don’t in photo story 2: Street Execution of Iraqi election workers and the same goes for the beheading of the American captive. Even without the pictures in these articles you are still aware of what is happening; only you need to envision the picture yourself.

On the other hand pictures like photo four flag draped coffins are the stories that need the photos to be shown. They are focused on a group not a person. Although the message that is portrayed in photo four is just as strong if not stronger then what you see in articles two and five. Photo four is the kind of stories that you are not afraid to read in front of you family.

Wally Rayl's states that "Not being able to face reality is a major problem in our society today." I agree completely with this statement. We have such a hard time excepting things when they don’t go our way. We want to believe what we are told in the news no matter how much is left out. We are taught that we should question things and challenge what we are taught. But when it comes down to it we just sit back and let someone else tell us how to run our lives. If we want to leave our mark on this world its time for us to face the music and make a change, and if one photo can do that then maybe it is time for us to all open our eyes and really look at what happening behind the lens.