Should Photographers Show Protestors' Faces? It's a Misleading Question.

In the midst of global protests in support of #BlackLivesMatter, the Poynter Institute caused a ruckus within the photojournalism industry last week with the provocatively titled “Photographers are being called on to stop showing protestors’ faces. Should they?”

At least part of the outright dismissal of the article by some photojournalists stemmed from the second sentence which reads “But there’s a growing movement that calls for journalists and citizens to blur or not show protesters’ faces.” In the same week, the encrypted communications app Signal released a feature to blur faces in photos, which served to conflate journalism ethics with social media norms. 

In this episode, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi discuss:

• Photojournalism ethics and the Poytner article
• Darnella Frazier, the 17-year old who captured the killing of George Floyd on video
• John Edwin Mason's essay on protest photos
• Controversy at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Buzzfeed keeps embedding Instagram posts
• NYMag's cover of the BLM protests