NY Times Apologizes for ‘Staged News Pictures’
Earlier today the New York Times printed a correction for a series of photographs Fred R. Conrad took of the galleries at the Museum of Modern Art. The images accompanied a review by Roberta Smith, published on September 30, of the recently opened “Abstract Expressionist New York: The Big Picture” exhibition.
According to the Times’ editor’s note, people who were pictured in the photographs looking at the exhibition “were museum staff members, who were asked by museum officials to be present in the galleries to provide scale and context for the photographs. The photographer acknowledged using the same procedure in other cases when an exhibition was not yet opened to the public,” the Times’ editors wrote.
According to an email from deputy photography editor Meaghan Looram to PDN, “A reader wrote in asking about the photograph, and that prompted us to review the circumstances.”
Looram did not comment on how the editors are addressing the mistake with Conrad.
“Such staging of news pictures violates The Times’s standards and the photographs should not have been published,” the editor’s letter concluded.
October 7th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Wow, what a shame. I’ll never look at a Conrad photo in the same way again. Is it real, or is it staged?
It would be great for PDN to follow up and get his thoughts on how and why this happened. Apparently he had done this before–how does he justify that?
October 7th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
really, your angry that a photographer sent to photograph a handout from some museum “faked” a picture of people looking at pictures? Please. What he did is not the issue, the reactionary journalism that goes on in news papers now days is the issue. Half of the crap news photographers are sent to photograph are total media hand outs and nobody complains. It is such a dumb set of arbitrary rules I am surprised these dinosaurs haven’t died yet.
October 7th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
@ Mike. What are you talking about? This wasn’t a media handout that he reproduced. He shot it knowing full well the people in the picture were museum staff, and not “visitors” as was originally purported in the captions. He was presenting a lie. You might think, well who the heck cares, it’s just a dopey review of some two-bit museum anyway so it shouldn’t matter. I guess that reasoning begs the question, where do one draw the line? You can stage some photos and not others?
Insofar as handouts are concerned, at least the reader sees the credit/source and knows it’s a commercial photo and to be taken with a grain of salt.
October 8th, 2010 at 6:50 am
“were museum staff members, who were asked by museum officials to be present in the galleries to provide scale and context for the photographs.” ?
I must say the museum staff members did a marvelous job arranging the subjects.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/arts/design/01abex.html
October 8th, 2010 at 8:02 am
Fred was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
Having been on the receiving end of a ranting editor because no picture existed in reality (and I didn’t shoot a fake) I understand, although don’t condone.
When it’s demanded of you to constantly pull a rabbit out of your hat on mundane assignments to magically have people involved in x-y-or z it becomes very tiresome and frustrating. Possibly the best thing Fred could have done was to shoot the museum sans people, then stage the scene as he did and fully explain to the editor, in writing, the two variations. At least then the buck would be passed up the ladder and his hands would be clean. But that’s all arm chair quarterbacking.
October 8th, 2010 at 9:53 am
This was never a “news” photo, a feature photo for the arts section is a more accurate description. The shock and dismay is a little ridiculous, a note in the caption would have avoided any confusion. No assault on journalism ethics here.
October 8th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
This seems to me to be another situation where the photographer was instructed to make photographs to be used more or less as an illustration. If the photographer is guilty — the guilt has to be spread around to the respective editors who had to have a continuing knowledge of how coverage is done when it is very obvious that the event had not happened yet. Fred Conrad has been working for the Times as a photographer from at least 1975. (I believe that he was a stringer at that time) I hope that some consideration would be rendered to him because it is very clear that he is not the only guilty party. If there is any shame — going after what might be called a ‘blunt instrument’ employee working to fulfill the photography needs of such a great newspaper, it just seems like extreme overkill on the photographer unless someone is trying to free up his salary. It’s time that someone in charge takes a look at what brought this affair to this particular ugly point.
October 9th, 2010 at 2:05 am
Well he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. I’m sure that the blame game started at the top and cascaded down to him at the end of the line.
Once again, its all too easy to ask a photographer to set up a photo, to contrive an image, But heaven forbid a that a journalist would ever do the same thing with a quote.
And tell me.. No doubt the commissioning editor must have known all along the exhibit was yet to open, and that staff of the museum were going to be used as photo props..
October 9th, 2010 at 3:23 am
If the staging of a photograph under any circumstances is clearly against the NY Times policy then the photographer is clearly at fault for violating that policy. In my opinion the NYT should be showing a bit of flexibility by stating in the caption that the pictures were posed. No big deal as long as their readers know what’s real and what isn’t.
October 9th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
When this sort of thing happens, it is bad for every working photojournalist. There is a difference between “illustrating” a story with feature images, and what is known as “photo-illustration”. A feature picture that “illustrates” a story, is not an illustration in and of itself, rather it is a picture that meets the same ethical standards of news photography, but is USED to illustrate a story. This is a subtle distinction, but one of which every news photographer is keenly aware, especially those who’ve been in the business as long as Mr. Conrad.
Once you begin to arrange elements within a scene, manipulate, and otherwise direct others to do things for your benefit, you are creating a “photo-illustration”, and the resulting pictures should be labeled as such. Whether you are arranging those elements yourself, or knowingly with the assistance of a 3rd party, as was the case with Mr. Conrad, it is a fiction, and should have never been passed off as a representation of something that really happened. And this is precisely what happened in this case. The pictures looked all-too-real, and were not labeled as “photo-illlustrations”.
It’s too easy to poo poo something like this and say the transgression is associated with a museum review, so it’s not important enough–let’s not make a big deal out of it. It wasn’t a staged photo shot in Iraq or Afghanistan after all, on an important story. However, how is the reader able to make the distinction between what is an honest representation of reality, and one that is a fiction? How are they to know when a picture has been staged, and when it hasn’t? This is where I think cases like this really hurt the efforts of photojournalists who are working on the more important stories and trying to shed light on Truth. Newspapers need to address this issue with the staff and readers, and be very clear about it.
The bottom line is that Mr. Conrad’s museum pictures ran in a “news” paper. When something like this is uncovered, it undermines the credibility of every working photojournalist. Mr. Conrad is a big boy, he should have known better and simply passed on the assignment. He is a member of the newspaper Union. It’s ridiculous to think his editors would want to fire him for being unwilling to breach the paper’s ethical standards without him having serious recourse.
October 9th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
In the arts section of the “news” paper announcing the opening of an exhibit. If you read the comment carefully you will see that I stated a note in the caption would clear up any confusion. The confusion you seem to having is what is a news picture and what is not. Sanctimony is never pretty.
October 11th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
“Such staging of news pictures violates The Times’s standards”; interesting then that the Times and many other newspapers have no problems running iStock photos when they would like to save a bit of money on photography. I don’t think photos from iStock come from a reputable news picture agency. If the Times, which I respect, wants to have the highest industry standards for newspaper photojournalism, then perhaps it’s time to quit using organizations like iStock.
October 12th, 2010 at 10:01 am
[...] PDN Pulse » Blog Archive » NY Times Apologizes for ‘Staged News Pictures’ This entry was posted in Ethics. Bookmark the permalink. ← How’d You Light That, [...]
October 12th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Mr. Conrad maybe, shouldn’t have staged the photos, but they certainly are lovely.
October 12th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Ken Windom says: “dopey review of some two-bit museum”
Oh really???? A major show at the Museum of Modern Art, with a Roberta Smith review in the so-called “paper of record????” And this is supposedly a visual arts blog???
October 12th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
[...] Basically the photos showed museum staffers as visitors without indicating so in the captions. The comments over at PDNPulse are pretty interesting, with some commenters arguing that this isn’t such a big deal, while [...]
October 12th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
At least the photographer didn’t manipulate the photograph’s context with Photoshop, as NYT and other newspapers have been accused of in the past.
October 12th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Meh.
October 12th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
The photo was published in a newspaper. Of course it’s a news photo. You want to call it a feature news photo, okay. But it is a news photo.
People should be concerned when any news photo is set up. It runs to the credibility of that photographer and even the newspaper.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:27 am
There isn’t a Presidential photo-op that isn’t staged, yet I’ve never seen a journalistic organization apologize for having presented those as news. This whole thing is a tempest in a tea pot.
R.
October 13th, 2010 at 3:51 am
The dinosaurs are dying. This is why – at long last – newspapers are losing their controlling grip on what what readers see and read. They are fighting back – what powerful interests wouldn’t – by morphing into websites. Interesting, and challenging times (small ‘t’).
October 13th, 2010 at 9:51 am
I’m a newspaper photographer.
I’ve had this happen to me many times where PR people will insert people into a situation to make them appear like the public, even when the public can’t be there.
I shoot what I see and describe it in the caption. In this case, I would have shot whatever happened in front of me. I would not have directed the museum staff, but if they were there I would have shot them and described them as museum staff in the photo.
I have no idea what Fred did, but it looks to me like someone told the museum people where to stand and sit. They are arranged too perfectly.
In a newspaper, all the photographs, at least try to adhere to the same ethical standard which is truthfulness, not truthiness.
October 14th, 2010 at 7:56 am
Imagine that. A photograph of people looking at art. And, oh my, the people just happen to work at the museum. I suppose they don’t actually look at art in the normal course of their duties. And if the museum had thought to let three people in to preview the exhibit, and the photographer shot them in these same exact positions … well is that what this is all about?
At least there aren’t thought baloons indicating what they are supposedly thinking.
“I’m bored. I wish I could get back to my desk job.”
“This one looks slightly crooked.”
“I have to go pee.”
October 14th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Put your fingers over the stand ins, the photo looks superb with or without them.
It’s not a news photo anyway. This is a non story and beyond stupid for the NYT’s to apologize for nothing and thereby create something for people to be angry about.
Maybe the lost souls who are angry about this should ask Thomas Struth about it, there is no higher order when it comes to museum photography, art or documentation.