I get several requests every month to comment on the very narrow idea that photographers and newspapers are materially altering images as a matter of course. This essay was written in response to a question that asked about a wider definition of manipulation and acknowledged that, whilst it's technologically easier to do now, it isn't any more prevalent than it was in the years before Photoshop.

The wider question that you pose, about just how much the news photographer manipulates their photographs by what they choose to shoot, how they compose pictures and which images make it past an edit. It is self evidently true that news photographers, by their very working practices, do have the power to choose how they represent what they have seen. Does this constitute manipulation? I would be very reluctant to use that word, preferring to talk about interpretation or filtering.

We start from a basis where, as photographers, we are asked to attend certain events and produce still images that tell the viewers of those pictures how we saw that event. The viewer of the photograph was probably not there so what they see is never going to be anything more than an interpretation of the situation. Good news photographers, just like good writers, use their medium to distill the a large number of visual clues and elements that they saw and heard at the scene and deliver two dimensional and frozen representations that use a whole range of conventions and techniques (call them tricks and shortcuts if you want) to tell the story.

The Guardian newspaper ran a very famous advertising campaign which showed video footage of a young tattooed skinhead running and diving at a pensioner. The scene was meant to make you think that he was attacking and mugging her. The scene was then showed from a different angle, a different start point and a different finish point which clearly showed that he had thrown himself onto her and knocked her out of the way of collapsing scaffolding. I don't remember the exact punch line, but it was something about taking a different view. It was a very powerful advertisement and it was a perfect (if constructed) illustration of just how easily we can use the way we frame photographs, the timing of the shutter and the angle we shoot from to either give an accurate representation of what we saw or to give a misleading and essentially dishonest one.

Just how often news photographers deliberately misrepresent what they have witnessed and how often they just get it wrong I cannot say. Each of us has to look deeply into our own conscience and comment on our own integrity. The profession as a whole can rightly hold it's collective head high and say that the vast majority of what you see is an honest and conscientious representation of how we saw the event.

Here we get back to the start; everything that we, as photographers, produce is a summary of the scene. We take events and turn them into two dimensional representations. All photographers operate within the confines of an angle, a fraction of a second and their own ability to filter massive quantities of information to make a single statement with appropriate impact. Does this qualify as manipulation? Not a word I would want to use about the way I or my peers work but the fact remains that we do have the power to do it.

At the final reckoning we have two things to think about:

1. Does the viewer of our work have the intellectual sophistication to judge for themselves whether we have delivered an honest image?
2. Does the unethical and dishonest use of photography by a small number of photographers and picture editors mean that the work of the vast quantity of ethical and honest practitioners is either devalued or discredited?

I would answer "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second. Should the answer to the second question ever change, then an honourable and dedicated profession will be damaged, and might even disappear. This would be a terrible thing because great news photography has the power to change opinions and make people take notice in a way that words or even video footage cannot.