Category: Ethics & Legal

The NPPA’s Mickey Osterreicher has sent a letter to attorney general for the District of Columbia protesting a new law that would prohibit anyone shooting photos, “upon the streets, sidewalks, or other public spaces of the District of Columbia, for profit or gain, without first having obtained a license to do so from the Mayor.” Uh … no.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a law suit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department claiming that the department’s deputies have repeatedly subject photographers, “to detention, search and interrogation simply because they took pictures.”

We spend a lot of time talking about the ethics of photojournalists in the field and in front of the computer screen. Did they manipulate the scene? The image? But there’s a whole other layer of the journalism process where ethics come into play – the editing phase. Over at Salon.com, Justin Elliot takes a look at a front page...

Italian photojournalist Ruben Salvadori has turned his cameras away from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to look at how photographers are covering the (apparently) regular battles. It’s a bit disturbing to see how many of them are, well, faking the news by showing a very narrow slice of what’s happening. Photojournalism Behind the Scenes [ITA-ENG subs] from Ruben Salvadori on Vimeo.

Please note that this post is not about politics, it’s about legal issues surrounding a political ad. The Huffington Post has a story about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s latest campaign ad, a web-only attack on Mitt Romney. At issue is whether the usage of a White House-provided image violates the terms under which it was released. In the ad, an...

Well, this is an interesting response to this early story about Fox 6 photojournalist Clint Fillinger being arrested …   The NPPA has sent along a follow-up note …

FOX 6 45-year veteran photojournalism Clint Fillinger was pushed back from the scene of a house fire and then arrested for alleging resisting and obstructing an officer. The whole scene was caught on tape.   Fillinger was standing behind a taped-off perimeter with the general public when an officer ordered him to back up repeatedly. When he asks why, someone...

Once again, a bill is headed to Congress that would create a federal shield law for journalists, the fifth one in seven years. This is the fourth time Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana has introduced this sort of legislation and the National Press Photographers Association is supporting this move. “Compelling reporters to testify, and in particular, compelling them to reveal...