02 July 2020

No. Just No.

A group of what I can only describe of excessively woke photojournalists have proposed a, "Photo bill of rights," which explicitly gives participants in protests to right to refuse to be photographs.

Let me be clear here: This is completely and totally wrong.

Anyone who allows the subject of their story to be dictated by their subject is not a journalist, they are a stenographer.

They are not talking about the coverage of private citizens in their private lives, they are talking about people engaged in public demonstrations to influence policy.

The question is simple: Would you give this right to a counter-protester who was a member of the Klu Klux Klan of a Neo-Nazi group?

The answer, of course, is no, not ever.
A new Photo Bill of Rights, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the current uprising against police brutality, has caused fissures in the American photojournalism community and raised an important question about “informed consent” in photographing protesters.

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But the bill’s language about how photographers should use “informed consent,” especially in the context of the current protests against police brutality, has caused a stir among journalists:

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At the latter organization, this has caused tensions. Photojournalist Noah Berger, who left the NPPA because it signed onto the bill of rights, said in a phone interview that it has long been understood that photographing people gathered in a public space for a protest has always been fair game, and that the language of the statement only furthers the right-wing smear that journalists are “fake news,” or an opposition movement.

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