photos affecting stories
Today in the Toronto Star, the front page story depicts the sad face of a bull dog “Rambo” who is fighting for his life.
I’m curious if the public is aware of the impact that good photography has on the stories we read. Before this sad doggie story is even read, we see the sad, sad puppy dog eyes and our emotional bucket is full before we get past the headline.
Knowing this, can we as PR practitioners use and abuse photography to skew our target audiences perspective of our story? A poorly laid out event can be buttered up as a smashing success with the aid of a single sharp image of the organizers smiling in front of their awards table.
Do we admit that we can be affected with a single photo? Can an image move a story from one emotion to another with the right image? What do we think about this media add-on?
A picture is worth a thousand words, Colin. Wa wa. Haha. You knew someone had to say that.
I guess I’ve never thought about PR professionals using photographs to “spin,” but I’ve thought about journalists doing so.
I took a course about propaganda in university, and I wrote a paper comparing how several dailies covered the story of Bridget Bardot visiting Ottawa to protest the Atlantic Canada seal hunt. Pictures played a huge part in these stories. Not only did Bardot display pictures of cute, fuzzy harp seals behind her podium when she spoke (which is ridiculous because those are baby seals which are NOT hunted!), but the papers included photos of the star with tears streaming down her cheeks.
It was all so disgusting. Haha.
I think photography has always been known for its ability to be used for selective imagery and contextual positioning. As you alluded to in your post, its power to provoke emotion and change perspective, provides great opportunity to convey objective and subjective perspective.
As far as PR goes, photography is probably as old as spin-doctoring political agendas in early democratic society. I can practically see the hand-shaking, baby kissing politician right now.