新闻摄影在中国：改变的十年(第三部分）

Photojournalism in China: A Decade Change (Part III)

　

3) Remaining Problems

　

a) Sensitive areas

 

  In addition to covering spot news, China’s press and photographers also cover such sensitive issues as SARS, AIDS, family planning, and religions. However, there are still some areas too sensitive for Chinese press to deal with, including some political news, diplomatic and military events. It is still hard to predict what would be happening in the next few years.

　

b) Legal issues:

  Copyrights are probably the best-protected field among all the legal concerns in photojournalism. In addition to that, individuals’ rights to portraits or privacy, and their rights to honor are also protected by law, although China is yet to have a press law. But sometimes the result could give way to misconduct in practice. A 2004 World Press Photo prize winning image incurred a law suit: the picture, taken during the SARS epidemic, caught a young man and a young woman, who could not be identified since there were masks on their faces, wearing wedding dresses walking in the street. The photographer and his newspaper lost the libel case since the couple is actually two models dressed up for a show, not a couple of lovers.

　

  There are also problems in photojournalists’ right of gaining access to certain news events, such as covering the court. When Li Zhen, a high-ranking official in Hebei, was put in trial for corruption, even the photographer for China’s leading national news agency Xinhua could not enter the court room to cover the case, because of the rejection of a local court official, while local newspapers and TV stations were allowed to go inside the room. Furthermore, individual right to privacy is violated quite often when press photographers go along with official law enforcement task forces in campaigns to crash down illegal activities. On the other hand, many Chinese photographers have had the experience of being assaulted, and beaten by photographic subjects.

　

  Obscenity is also a blur in China’s photography. Nude photographs categorized by the New York Times’ photography director Michele McNally as obscenity could be shown to kids without any barrier in the streets and bookstores.

　

c) Ethic:

　

  The line blur, not just in legal issues, but also in ethics. Most of professional photographers have no idea about photojournalism ethic, and most of photographic training programs never touch on the issue.

　

　Digital manipulating is one of the biggest issues in China today. In the summer of 2004, AP bought a flood image from its source, an online photo supplier in southern China, and put it up on the wire. Soon after that, however, AP had to announce to cancel the image since it turned out that the flood water in the picture was raised one foot higher digitally by the photographer. Unbelievably, the photographer explained in an interview: he raised the water level for “making the disaster more visually” and he did think that had distorted the fact. Furthermore, no one really knows how many politicians’ photos have been digitally manipulated before released to the public, just like a case reported in the Time magazine’s Asia edition in its September 13, 2004 issue.

　

　The ethic questions also involve photographers having subjects posing and fact-distorting caption writing, as displayed in two Chinese winners of 2004 World Press Photo competition. One of them, as mentioned above, caught a young man and a young woman wearing wedding dresses walking in the street during the SARS epidemic, and the photographer and his newspaper lost the suit for libel as they mistakenly identified two models merely in a show as a couple of lovers in the caption. In the prize winning AIDS photo essay, the photographer, who’s photographic education background in advertising photography, posed a female patient nude, which is against the local culture in Central China’s rural areas, and the dying female farmer in the picture appeared to try hard to grab a coverlid to cover her nude body with her unable hand. The photographer also asked an AIDS orphan to carry his parents’ portraits to the graves for photo taking.

　

  Taking a hidden camera to snatch shots of news value is also a common practice among photographers, since most photographers in China believe that they are ethically authorized to cover any thing in any situation. But victimized of their lenses are often people of vulnerable groups.

　

  Finally, there is the problem of taking “red envelopes” containing cash from the people inviting reporters and photographers to cover an event. The money is offered in the name of “transportation fee,” and is regarded as bribery news deal by some scholars.

　

Conclusion: Prospect

　Some problems now in existence could be settled soon, while others may remain for another decade. But China’s photojournalism will continue to grow rapidly since the coming 2008 Olympic Games and there is much room for development. Good pictures, better photographers and picture editors are demanded strongly by newspapers and magazines. A young generation of photojournalists, who were only working at fringe media, now starts to play the key role in the reform of China’s photojournalism.

　

    The People’s Photography, one of the two largest professional weeklies in China, asked its readers to recommend youth jury for its 2005 Press Photo Competition.　 He Longsheng, at 34 now, is one of the candidates on the list. Also on the list are Sun Jingtao, photography director of Da-zhong Daily in Shandong Province, Wang Jingchun, director of Visual (photography and Art) Department in Southern Metropolitan Daily in Guangzhou, and Li Jiejun, director of photography at New Express Daily in Guangzhou. All of them started their photojournalism career in the mid 1990s, and are in their prime time at mid 30s.

　

(End)

　

The Author: James Zeng-Huang is the picture editor with China Features in Beijing. He graduated from the photojournalism program in Syracuse University in 1991, and joined NPPA while he studied in the United States. He published photo book Life and Death in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994, key-authored China’s first Picture Editing Handbook in 2003, and authored Photojournalism textbook in 2004.

Website: www.chinafeatures.com

e-mail: cfphoto@xinhua.org

　

Special thanks to Ms. Xiong Lei, the Chief Editor of China Features, who polishes the story.