"Spiderman with his hand in a cookie jar. Whoever gets me that photo gets the job."

    Many newspapers and other sources of media rely on photographs to provide evidence of newsworthy events. They all believe that pictures are undeniable, unfailing, and incorruptible. However, soon after pictures were found to be the most reliable form of proof, the art of distorting this form of evidence was quickly created. Reality can always be warped to benefit certain individuals, which is why nothing should ever be taken as the ultimate truth unless proven by multiple other sources. 

Take Spider-Man 3, (the one that came out in 2007), as an example of how reality can be manipulated. In this universe, J. Jonah Jameson is the head editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, and he has an unfounded vendetta against Spider-Man. His #1 goal is to make him look like a criminal or an untrustworthy vigilante. So, when presented with photos of Spider-Man saving the city, the headlines of his newspaper say "Spider-Man- Hero or Menace?" instead of "Spider-Man saves the city again!". This is one example of how a picture can be distorted to convey different meanings, with the simple help of a catchy headline or caption changing the circumstances of where the picture was taken. 


In his quest to make a criminal out of this hero, he pits two photographers against each other in a competition to get him a photo that supports his claims. Blinded by the thirst for success Eddie Brock, one of the photographers looking for a job, cuts his loses and edits one of Peter Parker's pictures-the other photographer- to look like Spider-Man is stealing. This picture is printed and advertised as the true nature of Spider-Man, complete fake news benefiting Mr. Jameson and Mr. Brock. The editor in chief has no doubts the photo is real and fails to proof this photo as it was a perfect snapshot of what he wanted.  

This is why blindly relying on photographs as proof of what is going on in real life is not safe, and why pictures should be treated the same as any other kind of evidence, and equally likely to be false/biased.



Comments

  1. Katharina ZakApril 28, 2024 at 5:34 PM

    I thought that this was a very nice well written blog. I haven’t watched that spider man movie but I thought it was aery effective example .

    ReplyDelete

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