Media and Ethical Issues in Photo-Journalism

Abstract

The media profession is characterized by entrants of untrained personnel or trained personnel who are not really educated. This crop of vocationally low esteemed persons, who have radically burrowed themselves into the fabrics of this noble profession, have continued to constitute aberration to the profession and bastardized the image of practitioners. Such ‘journalists’ who should conduct themselves as watch dogs of society, have ironically not only availed themselves as instruments for compromising professional standard, but have also exacerbated societal problems by using their pen to deepen disunity. What could have been responsible for this irony? Are there no existing laws in the profession that impel every member to obedience? This paper contends that there are, but outright disregard for these ethics, either because of poor education, interest or sentiments must have been responsible for the abuse. Through exploration of contents (corpus) material, the writers provide a subtitle definition to media, ethics and photo-journalism where abuses are glaring in areas such as portrayal of violence and photo manipulation. The specifically highlight political and economic manipulation of the media as bane of society. The writers suggest among other things that journalists should go back to the drawing board and observe their professional ethics in order to bring back the required sanity.

Keywords: Media, Ethics, Photo-journalism, violence