Thailand floods: When journalists embellish visuals
| Bangkok, Thailand
Central Thailand鈥檚 devastating months-long flood, which has聽so far聽cost some 500 lives and billions of dollars in damage, has made for countless poignant scenes and memorable images. But that hasn鈥檛 stopped some journalists from staging their own, highlighting an ongoing issue that undermines the credibility and purpose of reporting.
One recent morning a British television station鈥檚 local correspondent stood knee-deep in water speaking to the camera.
A few yards away, several Thais stood, unmoving, on a small embankment of sandbags, gazing pensively at their feet.聽These locals, the foreign reporter explained, were faced with a daunting challenge: whether they should dare to cross to the other side of a small alley covered in water.
Off camera, boys and girls splashed about, laughing and smiling, in the flood, while other locals, wearing plastic flip-flops or rubber wading boots, went about their business.
Once the foreign journalist had said his piece on camera, he turned to the Thais standing on the small sandbags and thanked them for their cooperation.聽
They smiled, stepped into the water, and walked away. They seemed quite unfazed by the prospect of wading through 10 or so inches of water in a country where many people are used to seasonal floods, if not as severe as this year鈥檚.
Admittedly, several miles away on the northern outskirts of the city, where聽flood waters stood 3- to 5-feet deep, many locals were indeed prevented from getting around at ease. But that was not the case here.
' code of ethics, which is widely used as a guide to thousands of journalists, says that journalists should be honest when reporting and聽"Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it."
It鈥檚 also demeaning to locals who end up being used as mere extras in a reporter鈥檚 scripted narrative. 聽聽聽
At the risk of breaching journalists鈥� work etiquette by interfering in someone else鈥檚 work, I pointed this out to him.
鈥淗ave you done much television journalism?鈥� he shot back, implying either that staging events is a common enough practice in television news or that the medium鈥檚 heavy dependence on visuals requires stage-management now and then.
He was certainly hardly alone in that. Farther up the street, at a small open-air market near the city鈥檚 Grand Palace, another TV crew was staging an event for the camera.
Chancing upon a couple of young Thai Army soldiers loitering about at an embankment, they asked them to pretend they were piling up sandbags on it.
鈥淒on鈥檛 smile!鈥� the Thai cameraman chided. 鈥淧lease try to act serious.鈥�
聽By the third take, all went swimmingly.
Shortly after, I spotted a press photographer arranging flotsam for a photograph.
That doesn鈥檛 surprise Paul Christoforou, a veteran British news photographer who has been on assignments around the world and now works in Thailand.
Staging events for the camera, whether still or video, 鈥渉as always been done,鈥� Christoforou says. 鈥淎ll the best photographers, all the best cameramen do it. It鈥檚 wrong, but that鈥檚 just the way it is.鈥�
He adds: 鈥淸Some news] agencies even tell you: 鈥業f you can鈥檛 get the shot, stage it. But we don鈥檛 want to know about it.鈥欌��
