Reuters Reign

Reuters recently placed a ban on photos processed from RAW files. Photographers working for the news organisation must now only send photos that were shot in camera as jpegs. Reuters offered this explanation: "as eyewitness accounts of events covered by dedicated and responsible journalists, Reuters Pictures must reflect reality. While we aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, our goal is not to artistically interpret the news.” 

Gaza Burial, Paul Hanson, 2013.

Chen Qinggang, 2009.

A RAW file has long been regarded as the digital equivalent of the film negative. It contains the original image data captured by the camera and provides the photographer with more flexibility in their image editing. While creative image editing is accepted in commercial and art photography it is more problematic in documentary forms. And this is precisely what Reuters wants to limit.

Photojournalists, in recent years, have been employing image editing practices more common in the creative industries, like HDR and image stacking. Under the new protocols Paul Hansen's HDR inspired photograph would no longer be accepted. With only a compressed jpeg file available to Reuters photojournalists, the trend to create news in chiaroscuro will be restricted.

​This is one positive outcome from Reuters' decision. However this is more a question of aesthetics, than ethics. Its a bad visual trend that will eventually fade. While limiting a photojournalist's ability to edit their pictures in post-production may improve aesthetic integrity, it will do little to move us closer to any objective reality in photography. 

The king and queen of photographic objectivity were Bernd and Hilla Becher, who for many decades employed the same neutral, objective gaze to various industrial structures around the world. Unlike Reuters, their move toward a photographic objectivity was largely an aesthetic decision, not an ethical one.

​The absence of any formal variation in their work inadvertently highlights the many aesthetic choices a photojournalist must make every time they go out on assignment. The creative process starts well before the photographer begins to play around with a RAW file. If this were the case all photojournalists would be little more than snapshooters. 

We shouldn't burden photojournalists with the impossible task of acting impartially and objectively. It is enough to ask them to be honest. Preventing photojournalists from accessing their RAW files implies they are an untrustworthy  mob. We cannot expect photojournalists to work objectively, all we can ask them to do is work ethically.* 


* (I think Susan Sontag said this).