Obama: Transparency?

October 27, 2014 11:48 WCT

There has been a lot of talk lately from the White House Press of discrimination of who will get chosen to ask questions.  If the paper or news outlet does not write positive articles about the administration or inquires too deep about an event, then they will get denied access or receive last minute invitations when it is too late to be present.  Many who have been covering the "beat" for years say that this is the most closed administration to press access.  Here is an article I found:

USA Today

At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

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HDR Photojournalism?

Susan Brannon
15 January 2012

To my great sadness, I want to point out that The Washington Post printed a photograph on the front page that was in HDR format. This is clearly altering an image by combining several images into one. It is done to create a "sharper" and greater photographic moment than the reality of the subject. Many Landscape photographers use this technique and as a result there are many beautiful landscape images out there, but they are not real. For me, the HDR image looks a bit "surreal".

However, in photojournalism to alter an image is a great "phoo-pah" and the publishing of such an image on the front page of a newspaper (any newspaper) is like a slap in the face to me. Do the editors laugh at us while they make decisions to print such an image? They did say that the image was "composite". I am a true bread photojournalist who first shot with slides and mailed them in, then film and went to the press office, then in digital that I had to spend tons of my precious earnings on new equipment and continue to do so, in order to make the "news" in "real time".

This is a slap in our ethical code that I proudly stand by, of not altering any image for the news. Not a beep, not a color, no clipping, no cropping, and in RAW. That is the true art of a good photojournalist, to tell the story as it is, to reflect the reality and to record history as it happens.

For me, this is a sad day. Please read more about the image here: Poynter Institute