This is one of my favourite stories about journalism and ethics. Here it goes:
Rai is a middle-aged photojournalist in Salman Rushdie’s fictional work The Ground Beneath Her Feet who is still waiting for his big break. One day he gets a chance to break a major story on corruption by a leading political party. Everything depends on getting the right pictures that tell the story. But to take the pictures he will have to go into the heartland of the country, into the dangerous lairs of the politician and his goons.
In those days photojournalists covering dangerous stories would get special heels fitted into their shoes in which they could hide rolls of films with photos they have shot. This way, even if they are caught and their camera broken or rolls taken away, their photographs still get saved. But before Rai can get his pictures that will make him famous, he gets captured by the politician's cronies and they lock him up in a room with the dead body of another photojournalist hanging from the ceiling, who was there before Rai.
After spending many nightmarish days there waiting for his death, Rai finally manages to escape, but not before he has crawled underneath the flee-infested dead body, retching and throwing up, opened the heels of the dead photographer’s shoes and taken his film rolls. The next day the photographs taken by the dead photojournalist are plastered over the front pages of every leading newspaper. And Rai becomes the most sought-after photojournalist.
In summary, Rushdie says, a photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth.
Thus goes the question of journalism and ethics. Are ethics absolute? Or do they vary depending on where one stands? Can a journalist be 'unethical' for greater public good or public interest? These are some questions probably few can answer with conviction.
Rai is a middle-aged photojournalist in Salman Rushdie’s fictional work The Ground Beneath Her Feet who is still waiting for his big break. One day he gets a chance to break a major story on corruption by a leading political party. Everything depends on getting the right pictures that tell the story. But to take the pictures he will have to go into the heartland of the country, into the dangerous lairs of the politician and his goons.
In those days photojournalists covering dangerous stories would get special heels fitted into their shoes in which they could hide rolls of films with photos they have shot. This way, even if they are caught and their camera broken or rolls taken away, their photographs still get saved. But before Rai can get his pictures that will make him famous, he gets captured by the politician's cronies and they lock him up in a room with the dead body of another photojournalist hanging from the ceiling, who was there before Rai.
After spending many nightmarish days there waiting for his death, Rai finally manages to escape, but not before he has crawled underneath the flee-infested dead body, retching and throwing up, opened the heels of the dead photographer’s shoes and taken his film rolls. The next day the photographs taken by the dead photojournalist are plastered over the front pages of every leading newspaper. And Rai becomes the most sought-after photojournalist.
In summary, Rushdie says, a photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth.
Thus goes the question of journalism and ethics. Are ethics absolute? Or do they vary depending on where one stands? Can a journalist be 'unethical' for greater public good or public interest? These are some questions probably few can answer with conviction.
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