Photojournalism has fundamentally changed the landscape of news reporting. The instant reactions that can be evoked by photographs have made it impossible to publish an important news piece without an accompanying picture of the story. But photojournalism has seen its fair share of controversies over the years. With pictures of crises consistently making headline news, crisis photojournalism has emerged as a genre in itself—many photographers are devoted to shooting pictures in these contexts. But the genre has also been stained by photographers’ staging pictures, publishing objectionable images of victims—dead or alive—without anyone’s consent, and so on, all of which were issues that have caused outrage among viewers of the news. 

More recently, some photojournalists working in third world countries—to capture stories of social injustice and dire poverty, or photographers sent out to take images of recent devastations—have been called out for failing to intervene when necessary, or not doing enough on their part to help the subjects of their images.

While the recent earthquakes here saw a lot of people acting admirably in their efforts to help the victims, it also saw a lot of people act questionably—in some cases, being utterly insensitive. In the weeks following the earthquakes, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed I would view images of people whose houses were unaffected by the quakes travelling to ruined places to get a picture of their feet on top of a pile of rubble with a “#PrayForNepal” caption running with it. Even more appallingly, there were people posting proud selfies around barely standing buildings, as some form of twisted exhibitionism of one’s bravery. It wasn’t just the general people who were indulging in questionable practices; the international media, in stark contrast to the international rescue teams, faced a lot of criticism for their biased reporting—saturating the news with images of devastation, or for only reporting the heroics of the rescue teams from their countries. The Indian media received a lot of flak in particular, with the “#GoHomeIndianMedia” hashtag trending for a couple of days on Twitter.

One of the many complaints on Twitter against the Indian media was how they were travelling to inaccessible areas to get images of the local victims where help had not been reached, but without taking any substantial help of their own. Sunita Shakya’s widely viewed ‘Letter to Indian Media’—featured by CNN—asked “If your media

person can reach to the places where the relief supplies have not reached, at this time of crisis can’t they take a first-aid kit or some food supplies with them as well?” (sic). In fact, this question could have been asked to any of the media personnel working in Nepal, as the news ran with images and stories of rural villages where the locals were waiting for much-needed relief aid—but whether the photographers or the reporters helped them while they were there remains unknown. Furthermore, complaints against reporters who failed to address the injured people whom they were taking pictures of in any manner surfaced on social media as well.

The moral obligations within photojournalism are still debated upon, and photojournalists themselves are divided on their responsibilities. The Los Angeles Times’ 1997 photo series Orphans of Addiction is a good example of the purist stance some photojournalists take. Photographer Clarence Williams, along with reporter Sonia Nazario, captured the stories of abused children at the hands of deprived and drug-addicted parents. Despite the inhumane treatment of the children—which left them in mortal danger at times—the journalists chose not to intervene, as they believed that photojournalists were simply objective observers to events. They wanted to be a “giant mirror to society” and show the reality of American poverty. While they must have believed that they were exempt from any wrongdoing, and were only serving some social purpose in revealing a story, it is an outrageous approach to take. While it is important for stories to get out, their inaction at helping the children is immoral. Dumping stories of injustice on the public and only expecting them to act is going against one’s duties as a responsible member of a community. To believe that a photographer should not intervene under any circumstance is fallacious. The photographer’s presence is in itself an intervention, and can change the course of events.

However, there are limitations to what a photojournalist can do, and it is unfair to expect too much from them. While basic first aid could have been taken when the photojournalists and reporters visited the rural areas after the earthquakes, they could not have possibly taken enough supplies to satisfy whole villages. The job of a photojournalist is to draw attention to important issues. An argument made by photojournalists who capture horrific stories in situations where the people are helpless is that their images serve to shock the viewers of the news, and invite their attention and help. But satisfying your conscience with this argument when more can and should be done is dangerous.

In 1993, the South African photojournalist Kevin Carter took the heartbreaking picture of a dying little Sudanese girl struggling to reach a food centre while a vulture lurked in the background waiting for her to die during a famine. The picture—a Pulitzer Prize winner, which was initially published in The New York Times—brought widespread attention to the famine and increased donations towards the cause. However, it also garnered great concern for the fate of the girl, whom Carter had not helped. This caused outrage among many people who believed that Carter should have carried the girl to the food centre instead of taking pictures, with some calling him the real

vulture. Drowned in guilt and from the horrors that he had seen, Carter committed suicide a year later.

While Carter did his job by increasing awareness of the famine and helping many people indirectly through the increase in donations his picture brought, he failed to save the girl when he could have. Documenting tragedy is undoubtedly necessary to communicate harsher realities to wider audiences, but when it comes down to it, the duties of a responsible human being outweigh the duties of a professional. Reiterating on the earthquake here, responsible photojournalists in Nepal had a duty to

do as much as they could in terms of taking relief packages with them, as accessing remote areas was such an onerous task at the time. Photojournalist cannot disassociate themselves from their subjects. If they do not respond to the horrors of the people that they document when they are capable of it, they cannot expect their viewers to either.